


Love Mingled with Grief

by DarkTidings



Series: Magic and the Walking Dead [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beth Greene Lives, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Magical Accidents, Psychic Abilities, Shane Walsh Lives, Sophia Peletier Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27380176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkTidings/pseuds/DarkTidings
Summary: Teenage Beth Greene's psychic gift seems more of a curse when she witnesses her mother's impending death, and Annette and Shawn's deaths send the whole family into a tailspin. Meanwhile, the sole survivor of the Wizarding World relies on her own damaged gift to try to puzzle out why she's lost in the American South.
Relationships: Beth Greene/Carl Grimes, Daryl Dixon/Maggie Greene, Glenn Rhee/Paul Rovia (Jesus), Morgan Jones/Michonne, Shane Walsh/Luna Lovegood
Series: Magic and the Walking Dead [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2000122
Comments: 227
Kudos: 64





	1. Changes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DirectorDanvers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DirectorDanvers/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth's vision details a young girl's gruesome death, Merle finds himself a guardian angel, and Paul and Maggie conspire to end the madness in their family barn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is identical to the Bunny Farm chapter. Just putting it out for non Bunny readers, pending chapter two posting this weekend.

_The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater - J. R. R. Tolkien_

Beth shakes her head to clear the vision that feels like it's turned her blood to ice. She knows she's frozen, and her grip is painful on Otis's bare forearm where she caught herself to stop falling. The farmhand looks worried. 

"You having one of your episodes, Bethie? Do I need to get your daddy?"

She shakes her head urgently. Since Hershel didn't believe her about her mother's illness being dangerous, she isn't inclined to trust him with this. All he does is mourn now, when maybe they could have fixed it. Instead they lost Shawn, too.

At least Beth didn't see that one to play in technicolor in her visions.

"Otis? If someone asks you to fetch medical supplies today, don't go to the field hospital at the high school. Just don't." She puts all the urgency she can into her voice, squeezing his arm.

The big man looks fearful for a moment, but he nods. "I believe you, even if some don't want to right now. Can get supplies at your daddy's office, I bet."

The support in his earnest expression warms her heart. She flings her arms around him in an impulsive hug. "Please stay safe, Otis."

The rest of the vision flickers in her head as the farmhand moves toward the pastures to check on the cattle. The strongest parts are always the person she's touching, but sometimes other related events intermingle. Otis dying on the ground, betrayed by an apologizing man she can't see clearly, doesn't make a lot of sense, but the medical supplies do.

There's a spike in urgency on the first part of the vision. It calls to her, burning through her brain like a migraine. As she hurries toward the house, she sees Maggie's car leaving. Her heart sinks as she sees Paul at the wheel. A supply run, taking her only true ally away, since even if Maggie stayed, she thinks Beth should try to ignore the visions right now for their father’s sake.

Pressure builds in her head, and she whimpers in pain. It summons Rocky, who nudges at her hand. She kneels and hugs the dog close, stroking his smooth fur. "We gotta go into the woods, boy."

He understands 'woods' well enough, because he looks out to the treeline as if to say ‘what are we waiting for’. With a look toward the house, she abandons the idea of trying to convince her father to believe. Since her mother's death, he sees her ability as a curse.

If he stops her, the vision will build and build until the crescendo is watching a little girl die as if she were right there beside her. After the terror of seeing Annette's last minutes, both before and when they happened, she never wants that to happen again. Unseen by the adults who might stop her, Beth and Rocky make it to the cover of the woods.

She knows these woods like the back of her hand, spending hours exploring with her siblings. More Paul than Maggie or Shawn, with the age gap too great on the older two for the last couple of years. But Paul always had time for her. College didn't turn him into an insufferable adult who didn't have time for her like it did Maggie. She didn't need to be told that Shawn's 'difficulties' were of the kind they ran Just Say No campaigns in school about. She understands what an addict is, after all, even if her family tries to shelter her from it.

As her sneakered feet carry her further into the trees, seeking the sunlit clearing she knows well because of the lightning split oak, the pressure in her head begins to ease. Rocky yips softly, sensing the change.

The red and tan Kelpie is a trained service dog, purchased years ago as a pet when Paul was first adopted, but when the visions started, medical testing ruled them seizures. Rocky’s ability to sense them as they started got him the training to be her service dog, accompanying her everywhere, even at school. The visions may not be true seizures, but the dog still alerts to them, even in differing stages like now.

The clear image of the terrified, lost girl who seems to be Beth's age is fading, gaining that translucent edge that means she's close to fixing what's wrong.

Beth feels terror shoot through her when she hears growling and sees the walker menacing the girl of her vision. With a snarl of his own, it's Rocky who saves the girl. He hamstrings the walker, toppling the tall once-man and giving Beth a chance to snatch the girl's arm.

"Run! Run as fast as you can," she urges, dragging the girl with her. Rocky circles around them, growling. 

They flee as the vision of the blonde flickers and disintegrates to white noise in her head with the girl’s hand clasped firmly in Beth’s.

~*~*~*~

Luna’s damaged gift has always bothered her, but never more once the world met with a calamity that overcast anything the Wizarding World ever predicted happening. Now, the bubbles of pressure that build in her mind are harder to deal with, since she never gets the vision that should accompany them. The head injury she suffered the day her mother died, leaving a nine-year-old caught in the backlash of a botched experimental spell, warped her magic in ways that weren’t always clear until she was an adult.

She presses a heavily scented handkerchief to her nose, blotting the nosebleed. Whatever she’s trying to prevent was easier when she could apparate, but the plague that destroyed the Wizarding World in ways no Dark Lord ever managed sent magic into a tailspin. The only reliable magic Luna can access right now is her innate abilities that muggles would deem psychic powers and anything involving plants. They don’t seem to be affected by the magical drain, so she is grateful that herbology and potions were always among her strong points.

Something has the hordes of the dead in Atlanta stirred up. Luna moves from rooftop to rooftop, dropping into alleys and scaling fire escapes and downspouts, letting the pressure in her mind lead her in the right direction. She finally reaches a building near the centerpoint of whatever is agitating the dead. Hearing gunfire from the next building over, she ducks behind one of the big air conditioning units and observes.

The fight on the roof across the street makes her itch to intervene, but when she goes to leave cover, it feels like her head might split open. Relaxing back against the machinery, she pants through the pain and waits out the nosebleed. 

Okay. Not time yet.

It is almost physically painful to watch the man’s terror as he realizes he’s being left behind, abandoned by his fellows in their understandable animalistic urge to save their own skin. As the stranger howls out his rage and fear, she tries moving again. The pressure eases almost entirely, so she knows this is why she’s here.

Looking over the edge of the roof, she sighs. “Seriously, this is not the time to be without magic.” 

If she’s really, really fast, she can access that fire escape, but it’ll take literally sliding down five stories on a downspout that looks like it’s better days were before she was even born. Trusting the ‘sheer dumb luck’ that seems to cling to her in the apocalypse, Luna grips the downspout and eases her weight over the roof’s ledge and prays Harry’s idea of guardian angels exist.

Still stirred up by the noise and activity on the other side of the building, the dead are actually distracted enough that they don’t notice her in time. She’s two meters off the ground and climbing fast by the time they realize they let a meal escape like a squirrel climbing a tree.

“Things really have gone pear shaped on you, haven’t they?” Luna says, giggling when the man nearly has a heart attack at her seeming to appear out of nowhere. All his focus was on the door, which seems to be ineptly chained somehow, so she simply walked up beside him.

“I don’t know you, girlie, but I won’t say no if you can get me out of these cuffs.” The way he’s blinking, she suspects he isn’t entirely sure she’s not a hallucination. That’s okay by her, because she often sees things no one else does. She would wonder herself, if she were in his predicament.

Since whatever violence fueled him earlier seems to have faded, she kneels on the gritty surface of the roof and takes his wrist gently in both her hands. He’s damaged the skin badly yanking on the metal, but she ignores that in favor of studying the lock. “On the telly, they always show hair grips being used to unlock these. Suppose we can give that a try.”

The burly man doesn’t object when she plucks one out of her hair. She’s especially fond of the ones tucked in her braids today, with their sparkly fake gemstones that look like sapphires. The task proves easier than she actually thought, since she expected the stuff from the telly to be crap, actually. “There you go, free as a birdie.”

“Hate to tell you, blondie, we ain’t birdies to just fly away.”

Luna sighs, because she knows that. “It would be rather nice, wouldn’t it, if we could just hop off the roof and fly away. If we wait a bit, they’ll get bored and wander off. Then we can just scamper down the fire escape I came up and walk away. Those people with you made it rather more complicated than it should be.”

“None of them have the patience to wait it out.” He rubs at his face, sniffing hard, but he accepts the water bottle she offers him from her backpack. “Just how old are you, girl?”

Aware that most people mistake her for being much, much younger than she actually is, Luna flashes him her most winsome smile. “Over thirty, not that you’ll believe me.”

He just shakes his head, concentrating on the water. She retrieves a jar of healing ointment from her pack, not bothering with anything to clean his wrist. It won’t matter, not like muggle medicine. “Give me your wrist, please?”

Eyeing the jar in her hand, he shrugs and offers it. What she’s about to do is a risk. It won’t fix him completely, not like it would a wizard or even a squib, but it will help faster than anything he’s ever seen. But her gift led her here, to him, so she is going to take the chance. Slathering a good smear of the ointment around his entire wrist, she watches his eyes widen as the torn and bleeding skin knits itself back together. It’s a raw, delicate patch of new skin, one he can easily rip right back open over the next day or two until his body fully takes over the healing process.

“Part of me wants to say I’m higher than a damned kite and you’re still a hallucination,” he mutters, blue eyes narrowing as he looks from his wrist to her. “But I saw my great granny do similar. People called her a witch for it.”

Luna smiles sadly. This man’s family wouldn’t be the first to have magic die out over time. The grandmother could have been a squib, too, since she knows a few who can manage basic potions that rely more on the ingredients’ magic than the potioneer’s. “She might have been one.”

“What do I call you, witch girl?”

That makes her giggle. “Not that. My name is Luna.”

“Merle.” He surprises her by offering his hand. Good manners didn’t strike her as his cup of tea, but she takes it and smiles.

“The blackbird and the moon. Sounds like a children’s book,” she muses. “Do you want to return to your people?”

Merle blinks a bit at her segway about the meaning of their names, but shakes his head. “Not really my people, but my baby brother is back at camp. Need to go shake him free of them.”

“We’ll go find him then.”

“You got people, Moonchild?”

The question, innocent as it is, causes a wave of grief to crash through her. She doesn’t, not really, not anymore. While a small percentage of the muggle world population seems to be immune to the deadly plague, it wiped out the wizarding population so swiftly she imagines there would have been disasters all over if the muggles weren’t distracted by their own societies crumbling. When she fled London, Diagon Alley was fully exposed, all protections hiding it gone along with the people they protected from discovery.

She got sick herself, but Harry did something to save her. Luna still isn’t sure what it was, but the ritual when magic was failing ended with her being hurled through the aether as bodiless as apparating or using a portkey, to appear in a refugee camp in an American state she never thought to visit again. Only instinct and her gift nearly splitting her head with the urgency led her to snatch the crying toddler from death.

That memory reminds her that she’s not alone. “Yeah, but we have a three-year-old with us, so we can’t both go out into the city.”

“Well, my brother’s a grown ass man. He can look after himself while you get back to your people. You don’t gotta follow me around.”

Luna tests out the idea of separating from the man and feels a headache beckon and fishes out her handkerchief for the resultant specks of blood. “That would be bad. I think we’re supposed to stay together for now.”

“You sick?” He sounds concerned, not scared, so she shakes her head.

“Fixing your wrist isn’t the only thing I can do, but the other is a bit messed up.”

“Can’t have my savior wandering about having an episode like that to get eaten by dead shitheads. Assholes that left me would take in people with a kid. They’re soft hearted like that.”

She smiles a little. “Okay. We’ll find my friend and her son and then we go. Easier anyway, since we have a car, right?”

Merle’s booming laughter stirs up the dead blocked at the stairwell door, but Luna just grins as the pressure pops like a bubble on the wind, goal reached.

~*~*~*~

Paul frowns as Maggie picks through things in the pharmacy as if it was an everyday shopping trip. “This is stupid,” he grumbles, twisting his hair up into a bun and securing it. The pharmacy is sweltering in the summer heat, and frankly, he’s damned tired of coming into town every other day or so like the world still has cashiers and cops to patrol what supplies they take.

“Daddy says we can’t take it all. What if other survivors need it?”

“Dammit, Maggie, when was the last time we saw someone that wasn’t our own people? All this nitpicky rule of Dad’s does is put us at risk every time we come out. Don’t see him out here seeing what the world is really like.”

His sister sighs. “He’s grieving, Paul. He lost Mom and Shawn.”

“So did we, Maggie! He won’t even look at Beth anymore. It’s bullshit.”

Being adopted by the Greenes when he was nearly too old to consider it was one of the best things that ever happened to Paul after more than a decade in foster care. He wasn’t even lucky enough to land in actual homes most of those years, getting regulated to group homes with even less care and attention than a couple paid to look after state wards. A chance encounter with itty bitty Beth Greene and the ‘seizure’ she had at the Atlanta Zoo changed his entire life. From what he knows of his youngest adopted sister’s gift, it didn’t just change his life, it saved it.

Watching her fold in on herself the longer their father sticks his head in the sand and insists that Annette and Shawn aren’t actually dead is like having his heart carved right out of his chest.

“I know.” Maggie still sticks to the strict rules laid down by Hershel, taking only the basics they need, even as Paul guards the door and watches her back. “But he isn’t going to listen to us.”

“And if those dead things get loose? What if one of them bites Beth? Or Patricia when she’s feeding them?”

“I don’t know!” 

The stressed shout is clamped down by Maggie slapping a hand over her own mouth. She tears up and he feels like an asshole for making his sister cry. With a glance at the empty street, he leaves the door and goes to hug her tightly. “I’m sorry, Mags.”

Maggie nods against his shoulder, and he tries to remember that she lost her best friend when Shawn died keeping Annette from devouring her own family. He and Beth hadn’t been at the house when it happened, since he took his sister on a hunt with Rocky, trying to get her away from the oppressive atmosphere of the house. Hershel refused to believe Beth’s vision predicted their mother’s death, stubbornly arguing that the cannibalism on the news was drug related.

Even as Shawn fought to keep Annette away from Patricia and eventually got her in the barn, Maggie witnessed it, while Paul knelt in the woods beside a sobbing Beth. When he carried the exhausted girl back to the farm, he knew when he saw Otis sitting on the steps crying softly exactly what Beth saw and couldn’t tell him for the tears. Shawn died, burning up with fever, seventeen hours after his mother.

Paul placed his brother’s still human body in the barn at Hershel’s orders, but he’s regretted it ever since.

“We’ll figure something out. Maybe Patricia won’t tattle if I just take care of them? Lay them to rest?”

When Maggie moves away and wipes at her face, he knows she’s considering it. “Do you think you could do it quietly and safely?”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking on it for weeks now. Frog gig from the loft will work. I can reach their heads and never be in reach.”

“Okay. When we get back, I’ll suss out Patricia and make sure she’ll keep quiet. We can set Bethie on Otis, because you know he’d set the damn barn on fire, Daddy’s good opinion be damned, if she asked him to. He can just tell Daddy he isn’t finding any new ones in the woods like you do.”

Paul smiles sheepishly. “Realized I’ve been putting them down when he sends me hunting?”

“Yeah. So would Daddy if he got his head out of his ass, but we won’t make it obvious.” Maggie glares at the pharmacy shelf. “Is there still a display for those reusable shopping bags? I say we clear out everything we might need into those, and keep my bag for Daddy’s shopping list only. We can hide it in the trunk.”

Finally freed of his sister’s insistence they follow Hershel’s orders to the letter in town, he grins as he does as instructed. As he promised Beth, once they swayed Maggie to the right side of things, their lives will get better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greene Farm AU (requested by Director Danvers):  
> Primary POVs: Beth, Paul, and Luna  
> Main Pairings: Beth/Carl, Paul/Glenn, Shane/Luna  
> Background Pairings: Daryl/Maggie, Morgan/Michonne
> 
> Background & Requests: Beth is the adopted daughter of Hershel and Annette Greene, placed with them by her birth mother, Luna Lovegood, and hidden by a spell that even prevents Luna from finding her easily because her life is in danger if she stays in the Wizarding World. Her magic manifests as psychic visions as a small girl, activated by touch if someone is facing deadly peril within a factor of three (3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months). One of her visions saves a teenage Paul Rovia, leading to his adoption by the Greene family. Meanwhile, with the Wizarding World dead, Luna is propelled by Harry's last desperate ritual to find their daughter, a sacrifice eerily similar to Lily Potter's.
> 
> Consider Luna's spell a variant of the Fidelius Charm in HP. Hershel knows Beth is adopted, because he's the Secret Keeper, but Luna and Harry only have the bare minimum of it - that their daughter is alive and safe somewhere. Magic is wonky and nearly gone, with only inborn talents like those of a Seer still usable (Note: avoiding the overpowered fix-it issues of Magic in the ZA) and plant based magics. **Luna will be the only HP character.**
> 
> Beth & Sophia try to find the highway, but it's the wrong one. They find Morgan and Duane instead. Luna, Merle, Michonne, & Andre follow Luna's malfunctioning Seer power to converge on Rick, Shane, and Randall when Shane is trapped in the bus. No CDC. Amy, Jacqui, and Jim survive the quarry attack because Rick's group doesn't encounter the Vatos and is back in time. Beth, Sophia, Carl, and Duane are all 14-15. Luna is 31, Maggie 29, and Paul 22. Carl still gets shot. No Shane/Lori affair. Lori pregnant with Judith pre-ZA.


	2. Lost Duckling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth and Sophia plan on how to find Rick's group, Merle improves the traveling situation of his new companions, and Paul discovers his sister is missing.

Beth runs as fast as she can, the new girl's hand clasped tight in hers. Finally, they reach an abandoned house, relying on Rocky's innate sense of smell to alert them it's safe inside. When the dog seems fine going in, the girls follow. They need a place to rest, because in her panic to save the girl, Beth's run them in the complete opposite direction from her home.

Locking the deadbolt and tugging curtains closed, she looks around. "This is Mrs. Hayden's house. She was up at the rehab center after a hip replacement when everyone started getting sick."

The other blonde nods. "It's safe here?"

"For now. We can get something to drink and then start back to my family's farm."

The girl looks distressed. "I need to find my mama."

The word mama makes Beth's heart ache, but she pushes the hurt away for now. "Where is she?"

"We were traveling with other people. There was a traffic jam with a lot of cars on the highway, and the RV broke down again. So we got out to search for supplies while they fixed it when the walkers came, and I got separated."

Beth mulls that over. "There are two highways nearby. We can walk to one and see if it is where your mama is. That one isn't so far away. Then they can give me a ride home."

The idea of not having to walk all the way back is a good one. She's going to be in enough trouble for leaving home as it is. Going to the sink, she takes two glasses from the cabinet and fills them up. "I'm Beth, and that's Rocky."

The girl gulps at her water before visibility making herself go slowly. "Sophia. Why were you in the woods? Aren't you afraid of the walkers?"

Sipping her own water and then finding a bowl for Rocky, Beth shrugs. "I had Rocky, and I know those woods. If it got bad, I would climb a tree, and Rocky would go get my brother."

"Or run somewhere like this." Sophia looks around sadly. "There's a cop in our group, a new man. He was carrying me, but he put me down and said to run and keep the sun over my shoulder."

Beth frowns as the girl's stomach rumbles. "Why would he make you go alone if you don't know the woods?"

She knows Paul and Maggie cleared out the pantry here, since Mrs. Hayden got sick and died, but she drags out the stepstool and unfolds it in front of the pantry. Maybe they missed something. "Ah ha! Catch!"

Sophia bobbles her empty glass onto the counter and manages to bobble and catch the box of Cocoa Puffs. After looking at her grubby hands, she sets the box down, washes her hands, and then sits at the table with another glass of water.

Beth joins her at the table, declining the offer of the cereal. Fiddling with the little rooster and hen shaped salt and pepper shakers, she asks the other girl again, "Why did the man in your group leave you alone in the woods?"

Sophia hunches in on herself, as if it was her fault. "There were walkers, and he needed to find something to kill them with since guns are loud."

As much as Beth's father insists everyone in the barn is still sick, even Maggie, Paul, and Otis don't go around unarmed. Why wouldn't a cop have something? Even his gun is a weapon without being fired. She's seen Paul cleaning the butt of his hunting rifle before. And as they proved today, just run really fast…it just makes no sense.

"Next time, climb a tree, if you get separated. They can't climb."

Sophia nods, still munching morosely on the cereal. 

"I'm gonna use the bathroom and see if I can find something to carry a little water with us." Leaving the table, she searches restlessly through the house, grinning when she finds the cheap sports bottles from some company giveaway in the back of a cabinet. Filling them both with water, she remembers the bug bites on Sophia's legs and arms and goes to dig the bottle of bug spray out of the bathroom.

If there was more food, she might just stay here, but she isn't sure how long it would take Paul and Maggie to think to check here. Worse, what if Sophia's people leave? She remembers the rest of the vision, the boy getting shot by Otis, and Otis falling victim to the apologizing man.

"Sophia?" When the other girl looks up, she hesitates, because she's about to say something that will either make Sophia think she's crazy or playing a mean prank. "Is there a boy in your group? One who wears a sheriff's department hat?"

Blue eyes go wide as Sophia nods. "Carl. His daddy was the cop who was with me in the woods. It's his hat, because he was a deputy."

Dammit! The vision didn't focus on the boy like he's going to die, but still, getting shot seems so cruel. But she doesn't recognize the woods around them, because unlike the clearing Sophia was in, there's no distinct landmarks. It's another mark towards finding Sophia's people fast. Maybe she can still prevent it.

They finish up, letting Sophia use the bathroom and bug spray, before putting what's left of the cereal in a cinch bag with the water bottles and can of bug repellent. Slipping the strings over her shoulders, she leads them toward the closest highway, hoping it's the right one.

~*~*~*~*~

Luna still feels guilty that all they found of Merle's brother's camp was graves and destruction. The big redneck dug up the graves, carefully revealing faces. At least Daryl isn't among them. Merle chortles a good riddance to one grave, explaining the dead wife abuser when Luna jams her hands on her hips and stares him down for delighting in a death.

That was her first experience with the fact that the cantankerous, garrulous man wilts quickly under any displeasure sent his way. Michonne guesses it is a combination of her risking her own life to save him and her seeming youth. Merle can't reconcile her looks with her chronological age.

After they retreated to a deserted house for a night, Merle elects to stay with them rather than venture out on his own. There's no telling whether her gift will manifest to find his brother, but he says it's better than nothing. Luna catches him watching her thoughtfully that night and subsequent ones, and it reminds her sometimes of life debts she's seen. Perhaps enough magic still dwells in Merle Dixon's blood to take hold and bind his loyalty.

A huge explosion the day after they left the quarry draws everything dead eastward, so they wisely head southwest. Apparently the quarry leader sometimes made a case for going to a big military base. Luna's other sense doesn't contest the direction, but they don't rush. They need supplies, after all.

Merle comes back from their latest search, carrying two full cans of fuel for the small SUV Michonne picked out from an abandoned car lot. It's getting close to nightfall again, and they need to find a place to sleep. The SUV isn't big enough for that.

"Was thinking," Merle says, emptying the cans into the SUV. "Maybe instead of having to find a house every night, we find ourselves an RV. They hold more fuel, and the boy won't be all cramped up all day."

Michonne looks up to where Andre is twirling in circles and falling to the grass, giggling. After witnessing the fight on the rooftop, Luna had been prepared that Merle would be rude to her friend for her skin color, but he looked between the two women and Andre and never said a word. Maybe Michonne being a woman changes things. Luna doesn't understand it enough to try to tackle the subject with him.

"It would be nice, especially if we can get the fuel tank full. We would be able to have more supplies," Michonne responds. "But those things are big. I would be afraid to be stuck in some areas we can navigate with the Subaru."

When they both look to Luna for her opinion, she shrugs. "It would be like a wizarding tent, I suppose. Very convenient that it can drive, too." She wouldn't trust a wizarding tent if she had one. The level of magic in those would be a catastrophic issue for anything inside, she fears. She knows, in theory, what an RV is, from watching television with Harry.

Merle scratches at his bearded chin and looks back up the highway. "Saw a place about ten miles back. Skip the big Class As and maybe snag us a Class C."

Once they finish sorting what they've gleaned from the cars and loaded back up, it doesn't take long to reach the lot. Luna flits from motor home to motor home, fiddling with all the changable bits she can figure out. Merle even starts a few to show her how the slide outs work.

As entertaining as they are, she sees Michonne's point about the big ones. Biting her lip, she looks one last time at the nearly magical aspects of the expandable interior of one Merle calls a Class A. "I don't think I could drive this," she admits. "Which is a problem in an emergency."

She did learn to drive. Harry insisted. But it was in Britain, and the car magically assisted. At least relearning here is less fraught with driving on the wrong side and dealing with other drivers.

Merle spots something looking out the window and grins. He leads the way, finding something that looks like an enlarged version of the small SUV. Sliding the back passenger door open, he motions for Luna to step inside. 

"It's a miniaturized one!" Luna exclaims, going to explore the interior while Merle disappears to wherever he's been getting keys.

Michonne sets Andre inside, letting the boy dash back to sit beside Luna on the sofa. She assesses the space, checking out the appliances in the tiny kitchen. "If we take one of the trailers, we could still carry plenty of supplies, but have room to move around."

"And have a loo on board." Luna is no stranger to hardship, not after the Malfoy Manor dungeon especially, but peeing in the woods is not on her list of favored activities.

Michonne inspects the tiny room and nods. "Definitely a plus."

Once Merle returns and starts the vehicle's engine, they toy with all the gadgets. Stretching out with Andre on the sofa turned bed, Luna sighs. "Not enough places to sleep." It's sad, because she really likes this one.

Merle just shrugs. "I can sleep in the passenger seat just fine. It reclines enough."

Sitting up, Luna eyes the seat in question, next to where Merle's in the driver's seat. "That doesn't look comfortable," she says skeptically.

Michonne goes to sit in the seat and recline it. She's still mostly upright and frowns, shaking her head. "Since we need to keep watch anyway, we'll all share the sofa bed."

That decided, they quickly transfer what they can to the little motor home that Merle says is a Class B. It confuses Luna, because she thinks they should get larger as the vehicles do, not largest, smallest, middle sized. She wonders if it's a muggle logic problem or an American one, but isn't curious enough to ask her companions. With a trailer hooked behind them, they get back on the road, navigating ever further southwest to their military base goal.

~*~*~*~*~

Beth is nowhere to be found when Paul and Maggie get home. A search - and second search - doesn't turn up Beth or Rocky. He curtails anger at the idea that his baby sister is left so unsupervised that no one left on the farm realized she left.

Otis looks shaken, flushing deeply. "She had one of her spells," he admits shakily to his audience. "But she was telling me to be careful and not go to the field hospital for any supplies."

"Where did she go afterward?" Maggie asks, pacing the room. Even their father looks engaged and worried now.

"Had to go fix a fence, but she and Rocky were headed toward the stables." Otis tugs at his shirt tail anxiously.

"She didn't take a horse out." Paul checked there himself, because Beth does love to ride. "Maybe she had another vision and went out to try and change it."

"Those visions are the work of the devil," Hershel mutters. "We aren't meant to know the future."

"And you wonder why Beth would leave the farm instead of asking you for help. Or maybe she's just avoiding you in general," Paul snaps before he can stop himself. "You might as well call her the anti-christ."

It angers his father, but where that once would have made Paul want to back down immediately out of respect for the man who adopted him, he's so frustrated with Hershel living in denial that Paul doesn't care this time. "Bethie doesn't avoid me."

Even Maggie scoffs at that. "Name the last time you spoke to Beth that didn't involve saying pass the peas or similar."

Before the fight can escalate, Paul interrupts. "We need to go look for her. As good as she knows the woods, she could still get lost." Or treed by walkers, although that only happened the once, with Rocky coming to get him. This isn't Beth's first disappearance, just the first where those other than Paul are aware. He tried to make her promise to never leave without him, but she never would.

Worry settles into his gut as he and Maggie head for the barn, even as Otis heads for the woods on foot. The big farm hand hates riding horses. Separating to directions different from each other and Otis, the Greene siblings go out to search for their lost duckling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeline note... Luna's sections are off kilter with the others. While both Greene POVs are set during the time on the highway, Luna's are obviously set several days delayed. The time difference will slowly fade.


	3. Healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth and Sophia turn lost into helping rescue others, Hershel finally breaks free of his grief, and Luna thinks her gift may be healing as magic continues to die.

The look of distress on Sophia's face tells Beth it's the wrong highway before the girl ever confirms it. While they didn't emerge at a traffic jam, Sophia remembers enough of the scenery to shake her head. Beth takes her hand and squeezes.

"We'll just keep walking. At least we aren't lost, right?"

Sophia nods, brushing away a trickle of tears. "Which way do we go?"

"We're sort of in a box of land between highways. The highway that comes into town splits a ways out. One part is like a spur that goes to a little neighbor town. I'm guessing y'all were on the spur. That curves down to the highway that comes in from south of town." Beth looks back toward the woods they emerged from. They'd had to dodge another walker.

"Where is your house?" Sophia asks. She doesn't look like she wants to be anywhere near those woods, even with Rocky hamstringing that one pursuer for them.

"Through the woods a couple of miles. Even further by the road, but it's also the same way we need to go to reach that spur highway."

"So we can stay on the road either way. Good." Sophia smiles weakly. "Plus it would be easier for your family to find us on the road versus the woods, right?"

Beth nods, hoping Sophia is correct. Rocky seems relaxed, so she points the way north. "Town is the other way, but I'm not trying there on our own. It's the wrong way from my house, anyway."

They set off walking, pace slow because Sophia is exhausted. Beth has them stop to rest, making sure Sophia drinks a greater amount of water than she does. It's close to dark when they reach the turnoff to Beth's family farm. Just beyond it, Beth sees why the travelers didn't come this way.

"There's a tree down. I guess Maggie and Paul didn't care because of not needing to go that way." Technically, someone could drive around the crown of the fallen tree, but it's a narrow space. Beth can understand backtracking instead rather than risking getting stuck.

Rocky surprises Beth by darting off, barking. Wide eyed, she looks at Sophia. "Probably walkers."

"Should we help him?" Even though they really have no way to do that, it's nice that Sophia thinks about that before running away instead, Beth thinks.

There's a shout of "Duane!" that makes the girls risk approaching the tree's trunk. Beth scrambles up the rough surface of the oak to peek. On the other side, a tall man is hacking at a small swarm of walkers that have a boy trapped in a Land Rover. Rocky is helping, distracting just enough of the seven to make it a fair fight.

Beth is out of reach, so she tugs a loose branch broken off into the fall out of the crown. Clapping her hands as loud as she can, she draws attention to even the odds further. Below, she hears Sophia make a scared yelp before she climbs up, too. But the other girl bravely starts clapping as well.

A broken tree branch isn't that different from a baseball bat, and Beth didn't play softball for nothing. Instead of a swing from the side, though, she wields it like an axe. Bludgeoned from above, she takes out two walkers. The man with the machete kills the two that Rocky crippled before staring at them in amazement.

"Jesus Christ, please tell me you girls aren't alone," he mutters. Although covered in gore at the moment, Beth thinks he looks in good health.

"Sorta. We are trying to get to my home. It's about half a mile from here," Beth answers, calling Rocky over after she edges away from the dead to slide down the trunk. Sophia doesn't budge, sitting down on the tree.

"In a normal world, a grown man shouldn't offer a ride, nor should two girls accept, but walking isn't safe these days." He cleans his machete on the dirty clothing of a walker before sheathing it. "My name is Morgan Jones, and my boy's name is Duane."

Sophia makes an odd sound. "I know your name."

"Can't say I know why, miss."

"You helped a deputy named Rick Grimes about a week ago."

Beth watches curiously after checking over Rocky for injuries and rinsing his mouth with what little water she has left.

"That I did. Haven't heard from him since."

"He found his family at a campsite outside Atlanta," Sophia continues. "I'm not really sure, but I think they're on the highway that branched off a ways back. Big traffic jam that way."

Morgan walks to the edge of the road, looking around the tree. "I can get the Land Rover around this. Take you girls home before I start looking for my friend."

Beth looks up to Sophia, who shrugs. If her new friend isn't volunteering to ride completely alone with the strangers, she isn't correcting it. Someone will find Sophia's mama, one way or another.

Once Morgan gets the SUV around the tree safely, the girls share the front passenger seat. Duane squeezes into the back, with Rocky squished into the floorboard between Beth's feet. They're minutes from home now, and Beth dreads the lecture, but at least one part of her vision is changed.

~*~*~*~

With no headaches to alert them, Luna's group makes it all the way to the city Merle calls Columbus. Well, the city that used to be Columbus. There's destruction as far as the eye can see, and even more than the fall of Diagon Alley and half burned Atlanta, it sinks deeply into Luna's being just how wrong the world is now. She climbs up the twisty remains of concrete and metal that were once a freeway overpass, perching atop it and just mourning the chaos before her.

There was death in the other cities - roaming swarms of things worse than inferi - and destroyed things, but the impact there was less. Perhaps it is because there, it seemed a battleground of disease versus small scale fighting. Here? Luna finally understands the stories about the World Wars. 

Grunting warns her that Merle is trying to reach her perch. He manages to swing a long leg over the metal girder to sit astride like riding a thestral. His skin has a heavy sheen of sweat, and she wonders idly if it's from exertion or fear of heights. Merle didn't seem afraid of heights on the Atlanta rooftop, but that was when he was admittedly still under the influence.

"Witch girl, this ain't a safe place to play birdie on a perch." There's concern in his expression, and Luna feels regretful for worrying him. Probably Michonne, too.

She sighs, not sure how to admit that being up high is the closest she can feel to flying anymore. It's the closest she can feel to Harry. "I have a hard time remembering heights are dangerous to non-magicals," she admits. "They might be to me now, but I don't think it wise to conduct that experiment."

"Please don't." Merle seems nauseated by the idea. "What happened before? You bounce like Andre's little basketball?"

"From a height like this? Very possibly. Magical children played sports on flying brooms. We had to be fairly durable. Adults lose some of the instinctive protection, but they also had spells to arrest a fall."

"Half the time, I wish I coulda seen your world before." Merle's looking around now, so at least he doesn't seem to be afraid of heights.

"And the other half?"

"I think it would be frustrating as hell, to see it and not be able to do it."

Luna's original idea that Merle had some vestigial magic within him proved correct. It's just a faint whisper, but it boosts her potions and even seems to have given him a boost in endurance as she compares the things magical children survive to the stories he tells of him and his brother. She suspects that if she ever meets this Daryl, the younger Dixon is a full blown squib. If he'd met another squib, his children would be the mysterious muggleborn once rejected by the wizarding world that failed to realize such children were simply their own bloodlines circling back to magic.

"You still miss him." The rough man's kindness is something she knows he would normally hide, armored up like those weird armadillos that look like they should be magical, but aren't. Luna is glad of it, because the world doesn't feel so strange to her, knowing that creatures like that are waddling about still.

"I suspect I always will, considering he died to save me." Luna misses the rest of her friends lost to the virus, and even her poor father has been dead many years now. But Harry? That's a raw ache that won't ease anytime soon.

They fall silent, even as a breeze kicks up and plays with Luna's long hair. There's a river in the distance, so she's told. Even further downriver, eventually that river joins with another to form a third and flow into the sea. A stray thought that she would like to see one of those Florida beaches always raved about on the telly flits across her mind.

"Ow!" The sharp pain in her head has her clamping her thighs reflexively around the girder. A strong hand steadies her further, even as she cradles her head in her hands.

"Here, moon child. Nose is bleeding." Her handkerchief is tugged from the cute little pouch on her denim overalls and gently pushed against her nose until she can take it over. "What caused it?"

"I was thinking about Florida beaches." Although her eyes are watering, the ache is gone. As an experiment, she smiles around the handkerchief. "Balance me?"

Merle doesn't like the idea, but his other hand grips her, too. Blue eyes study her carefully. "Shouldn't we try this on the ground?"

"I think seeing the lay of the land helps." Luna's never spent much of her life at ground level, after all. Looking west, thinking of whatever lies beyond that river? "Ow!"

East is the same. Only north seems appropriate. The sensation is so opposite a headache forcing her to a destination that she's a little puzzled. Maybe as magic continues to fade, her gift is healing? The damage was magically caused, after all.

"Maybe it is where your kid is? Some magic bubble she survived in?"

The Fidelius spell seems to be crumbling. Not in the abrupt way of a dying secret keeper, but slowly shriveling away like a puddle drying in summer heat. Where once, Luna only remembered that she and Harry gave their daughter up for adoption to keep her safe, she's assembling a jigsaw puzzle of memories bit by bit.

A blonde baby, delicate and fragile, born almost a full month early. An older man, gaze kindly in a way that rang far more true than Dumbledore and his constant machinations. A cheerful woman that Luna hated to leave. It's all she has so far, other than the eerie familiarity that Georgia is somewhere she once called home.

"Back the way we came, somewhat."

Merle sighs, the sound coming from deep within his wide chest. "Wonder why it let us come this far?"

"It wasn't time yet."

Like the tickle of pixie wings, Luna feels something settle around her with those words. Whether they apply to finding her daughter or Merle's brother or something else entirely, she doesn't know. A sense of anticipation crackles across her skin where Merle's still steadying her on their perch.

Something big is about to happen, and it will need them both.

~*~*~*~

Returning as darkness falls on the Greene Farm makes Paul feel like he failed. But searching at night, especially on horseback, is a recipe for disaster. He's the last one back, because he can see Otis on the front steps, shoulders slumped, and Maggie? She's pacing outside the stable.

Paul slides to the ground, not surprised when Maggie flings herself in his arms for a hug strong enough to make him grunt in pain. His horse is patient enough to wait out his sister's need for comfort, even with home so close at hand. "We'll go back out at first light."

"Alright. Bethie, she's smart and knows the woods. She would find a place to stay, right?"

"You know she would. I'm going to check the Hayden house tomorrow. There wasn't any sign at the Forester place."

The sound of a car engine makes them both stiffen. All the Greene vehicles are accounted for. "You got your gun?" Paul asks softly. Their father hates handguns, thinking them useless things meant only for violence. The rifles used for hunting are different. But Maggie's had her license for years now.

She pats the small of her back where her hidden holster rides. Paul grabs the rifle out of the saddle holster and swats the horse to send him inside the stables and out of sight. On the porch, Otis is on his feet, standing alongside Hershel. Paul is glad to see even his father is being wary, because his shotgun is in his hands.

Hershel Greene may believe walkers can be cured, but man himself? That he's cautious of.

The SUV pulls to a stop in the middle of the farmyard, not getting too close to the house. The passenger door opens, and a girl wiggles to the ground. Although she's blonde, it's not Beth. But then Rocky is loose, bounding happily to Paul and Maggie's shadowed alcove at the stable, while their missing sister thumps to the ground.

"Bethie!"

To all their surprise, considering his icy, careful distance from his youngest over the weeks since Annette and Shawn died, Hershel passes his shotgun to Otis. He meets Beth halfway, sweeping her into a hug so fierce the teenager is lifted right off her feet. Even before Paul and Maggie reach them, they can hear the sound of weeping… and Hershel repeating an apology over and over to Beth.

As much as they both want to simultaneously hug and shake their sister for her misadventure, they hold back. If it's brought Hershel even halfway back to the real world, they aren't interrupting. Instead, Maggie goes to the hesitant girl shifting from foot to foot, and Paul smiles warmly at the older man and boy still in the Land Rover.

There's a story here to be told, but for now? They can just feel joy that Beth's home safely, and that the gaping, bleeding wound in the family is maybe starting to finally heal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Hedwig yet. She's reserved for another chapter, but she is coming.
> 
> Confirmation of Merle's scarcely there squib status... And a reminder since people ask: Hershel and Daryl are squibs. Beth and Luna are witches. There is one other actual magic capable character not yet seen. The only hint: it's not anyone from seasons 1-3.


	4. Find My Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hershel apologizes to Beth, Paul returns Sophia to her group, and Luna finds someone who isn't under the influence of the Fidelius spell.

Beth truly expected to be yelled at, and she does deserve it, for scaring Maggie, Paul, and Otis, especially. But everyone seemed so stunned at her father’s reaction to her reappearance that no one seemed to have the inclination to lecture - yet. She isn’t so foolish as to not expect something’s coming this morning now that everyone’s had time to sleep on it.

Sophia’s presence helps a lot, as does Duane and his dad. Morgan was apologetic and offered to move on, which no one accepted. He’s got a kid with him, a kid Beth’s own age, and he brought Beth home. Going to find Sophia’s people had to wait until morning because Maggie and Paul are familiar with the area and getting to it at night is too risky.

Patricia lays out breakfast for everyone before the sun's even up. Maggie, Paul, and Morgan set off in his Land Rover after eating, taking Sophia so that her people can see she's okay. When Jimmy is told to take Duane out to help with morning chores and Patricia goes to start laundry, Beth is a little surprised when her father joins her to wash dishes.

The simple gesture makes her want to cry, and she ends up sniffling. It was always Beth and her mama doing the dishes, once Maggie went to college. Otis and Patricia hadn't lived here before the outbreak, and Shawn would do double of every other chore to get out of dishes for some reason. 

Hershel pauses in drying the dish in his hands, setting it on the counter, and pulls her into his arms. "I'm so sorry, Bethie," he says softly, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "You needed me, and I was too selfish to be the father I promised to be."

Clinging to him, she sobs, tears wetting the front of his white dress shirt even as her soapy hands grip the back. Nothing has been right since she hugged her mother that day in May and had that horrible vision. "I wish I could make them stop, Daddy."

Beth doesn't want to see these things anymore. It's so rare for her visions to save anyone. Most deaths seem set in stone, like seeing her sixth grade teacher's stroke. Her father saying they're a curse after her mama's death? It's more true than not.

"Sweetheart, if I could stop them, I would. But that girl is alive because you were able to save her." Hershel uses his handkerchief to dry her face, smiling gently. "Paul is alive because of one of your visions." There's guilt in his expression, and she knows what's unsaid. If they'd believed her about her mother, Shawn might still be alive. 

She hugs him tightly before returning to the dishes. "Less people now," she mutters. "Probably fewer chances for them, right?"

Hershel doesn't give her any false reassurance. The world's gone off the deep end. Death's a lot closer to everyone than it used to be. But he does pat her shoulder before rinsing the next dish. "I promise not to ignore one of them again, but you've got to promise me that you'll never go off alone like that again. I know I wasn't an option, but Otis would have gone with you."

Beth nods jerkily. "Part of my vision was about him, Daddy. He can't go to the field hospital in town." Then she freezes, remembering the middle part of that long, terrifying sequence that led to Sophia and Otis both dying. "There's a boy. He's going to be shot by Otis."

"Where?" Hershel's voice goes as serious as it ever gets.

"Out in the woods. There was a deer. The boy doesn't die, I don't think. He's part of Sophia's group."

Taking a deep breath, Hershel nods. "Alright. That's an easy one to fix. We just don't let Otis hunt until we know the boy is safe."

Through the kitchen window, she can see the kind, gentle farm hand loading compost for the garden into a wheelbarrow. He's been part of her life as long as she can remember, and losing Otis would be as bad as her mama and Shawn. "Maybe we don't let him leave the farm at all, okay, Daddy?"

Hershel nods. "We'll do just that."

~*~*~*~

When they reach the traffic jam on the highway, Sophia's happy cry identifies that her group is still there. Paul figured as much, as he doesn't recognize the big Winnebago from prior visits to the area. The older man on watch is alert, but probably not wary enough because he smiles when he spots strangers, not even holding his rifle. It's not just him that thinks that, because Paul hears Morgan mutter about foolishness.

"Only the watchman," Maggie comments, and Paul pauses in opening his door. "Be cautious, Paul. Could be hiding like we did last night. They have cops in the group, after all."

Nodding at his older sister's caution, he gets out of the SUV, motioning for Sophia to follow. The old man's face nearly splits in two from a broad, happy grin.

"Sophia! What a sight for these old eyes." The white bearded man heads for the ladder, although at least he finally picks up his rifle to sling it over his shoulder. At least the man's not completely incautious. They may be friendly, but none of the walkers are.

"Dale! Where's my mama?" Sophia asks, hurrying forward.

"They're out looking for you, sweetheart. Everyone but me, Amy, and T-Dog left as soon as it was light enough to see."

"Even my mama?" The incredulity in the girl's voice is almost amusing.

"Even your mama. Even Carl's out looking." Dale turns to Paul, gaze a little more assessing than he expects. "We owe you and yours for finding Sophia."

Paul shakes his head. "My little sister did the finding. But by the time they got back, it was too dark to come looking last night."

"We found Mister Jones first, Dale. He knows Carl's dad." Sophia points out Morgan, who is standing near the driver's door. Only Maggie stayed in the car, but she gets out when Paul signals.

"I do recall Rick telling us about the man and his son."

Paul offers a hand to Dale, who shakes. "Paul Rovia. This is my sister, Maggie Greene. Our other sister, Beth, is the one who found Sophia. Our father's the local veterinarian. Sophia said y'all are looking to see if Fort Benning is still viable, but my family is offering a couple days to rest and get stocked up."

Sophia's appetite both last night and this morning worried everyone who watched her eat. Paul knows the signs of a kid who's been uncertain of meals, so it hadn't taken much to convince his father to allow them to help the other group. Hershel's offer is temporary, but at least it's a change from the Greene patriarch's isolating behavior.

"That's mighty generous of your family. It's not just my decision, but I can't see them turning it down, to be honest." Dale looks toward the RV with a frown. "Would a veterinarian be able to look over a human wound? One of our people gashed his arm open yesterday, and it's infected. We gave him antibiotics, but he's still running a bad fever."

Maggie comes closer. I can take a look. I work with our father in the clinic." Dale leads her to the feverish, suffering man, who is tended by a nervous blonde about Paul's age, and Paul doesn't even have to see the wound to know it's bad. "We'll need supplies I don't have here."

"I can make the run, or they can come to the farm," Paul offers. Maggie doesn't get worried easily, and she isn't bothering to hide it from her patient. The man's sweating heavily and shaking as Maggie replaces the bandage.

"I need to stay here to wait for the others," Dale says, voice thick with concern. "But Amy and Sophia should go."

"I want to wait here for my mama," Sophia says, barely audible. "She'll come here first, right?"

Paul sighs, exchanging a look with Maggie. "Why don't you take him to the farm? I'll stay here with Dale and Sophia. Safer to have three people around with a kid."

It takes a minute for Maggie to nod. While he can go for supplies, it's safer for the sick man to be at the farm than here. Morgan helps him get T-Dog to the Land Rover, and they drive off with the new blonde along for the ride. Paul eyes the traffic jam, but remembers Sophia's experience wandering those abandoned vehicles. "Got any cards?" he asks.

The relieved look on the girl's face tells him it's the right decision, and they've eaten a cobbled together lunch with Dale when a weary group trudges out of the woods. Paul doesn't need Sophia's excited shout to identify that her mother's in the group. He hangs back with Dale as all the women seem to need to hug mother and child, his own smile bittersweet as one of the women explains the deputies and boy kept searching.

"I should probably get back to my family," Paul tells Dale quietly. He's finally drawing notice of the group who returned, so Dale explains him being there and Amy and T-Dog's absence. The enthusiastic hug from Sophia's mother makes his heart ache a bit as she thanks him for finding her baby.

"We can give you a ride," Dale offers. "Can't leave as a group yet, not til the men and Carl are back."

Paul eyes the woods. "Where did y'all split up?"

"Some church nestled in the woods. It had automatic bell music, so we thought someone might be there," a slender brunette explains.

"What direction did they head after?" Paul knows which church, because he's left the bells alone because they attract walkers away from the farm.

"East." It's the redneck who responds, a broad shouldered guy in a sleeveless shirt with a crossbow on his back. "Them three will be like bulls in a china shop out there."

"Hard to miss. I got it." He snags his backpack and rifle. "It's not a long trip through the woods. Y'all were only about a mile from the outer edge of our farm. I'll see if I can come across them on the way home and send them back your way."

The blonde who looks too much like Amy not to be family steps forward. "I'll go with you."

Paul shakes his head. "You aren't used to the woods. You'll slow me down. If you want to get to your sister, you need to go back to where the highways split. Go around the downed tree, and take the first county road to the left. Name on the mailbox is Greene."

"You shouldn't go alone," Dale interjects, his worried expression reminding Paul of Hershel.

"I know these woods like most people know their own living room, Dale. I'll be fine."

"At least take someone with you. Daryl wouldn't be a hindrance. Or Glenn."

Based on the affronted look on the redneck's face, he's one of the two suggested. Yeah, not happening. Paul sighs and heads for the guardrail. If they're that set on him not going alone, someone will follow.

~*~*~*~

Luna isn't sure why, but she thinks they need to stop. There's nothing terribly special about the country road Merle's driving down, but it was what felt right this morning. Now? They need to stop.

"Merle. Pull over." She taps his shoulder, since it feels more urgent now. 

Glancing at her, he nods and brakes, simply stopping in the middle of the road. Luna opens her door and climbs out of the tiny RV, tilting her head and listening intently. Once, there were whispers and barely glimpsed things, some actually magical beings of their own. Other things that she sensed were often just strong emotions. She's lost the glimmers of creatures who were too magical to survive this world. But the emotional auras are still there.

The midday sun is almost blisteringly hot. She turns, feeling it on her too pale skin, trying to figure out what is going on. "C'mon, what needs me?"

Another turn, and she spies Merle standing at the front of the RV, looking curious. "Do you feel it, too?" she asks. All the fine hairs on her arms stand up, like they always did around thestrals. She can't imagine those lovely skeletal horses surviving, so she keeps looking.

He shakes his head. She knows he's not a squib, at least not by the British definition of the word, but the man pings her senses the way nargles once did. Sometimes she wonders if what he feels like is how someone feels if their magic is taken away.

Michonne's in the driver's seat now, keeping a cautious watch. Just when Luna's about to give up and think her magic's gotten worse, there's the unmistakable sound of wings as a snowy owl swoops onto the branch of a majestic oak tree. 

"Hedwig?"

At the acknowledgement, the white beauty hoots, and the sense of death magic lifts and swirls like dust in a long forgotten room. Luna's vision shimmers with an intense feeling of not being alone, and her head starts to throb. Merle sneezes, and the feeling disappears. There's only their tiny group on a remote road in Georgia, facing an owl that Luna thought died with Harry.

"Can I have your vest?" Luna asks. Her thin tank top isn't meant for an owl to perch on. Merle passes it over, watching with that intent expression he uses anytime she does anything remotely magical. On him, it's form fitting. On her thin frame, she looks like she's playing dress up. 

"Hedwig? Come, pretty girl."

With a gutteral hoot, the snowy owl glides down to perch on Luna's left shoulder. She begins grooming Luna's hair, tugging blonde strands free of the braids Michonne wove yesterday for her. Merle opens the sliding door for the rear of the RV van.

"If you sit and scoot, she can stay put," he suggests. "Who is she?"

Inside, she can see Andre looking excited by the bird, but he's a good boy and doesn't try to leave his spot belted in the back. As Luna scoots backward, she registers Merle's words and smiles. Not what, but who.

"Magicals use trained birds for delivering mail, usually owls. Those weren't so magical that they died with their owners, but Hedwig was also Harry's familiar. When he pushed me into the ritual portal, she was still with him. I thought she died with him. Familiars usually do." Her hand shakes as she strokes Hedwig's back, and the owl makes a mournful sound.

"Maybe she's tied to you?" Michonne suggests.

Luna shakes her head. "I would feel that." Eying Hedwig, she fumbles for a package of beef jerky and offers a strip to the owl. "I think she's looking for our daughter."

Taking the dried meat, Hedwig hops off her shoulder, landing in the floor to tear at the jerky. They all watch her for a long moment, before Merle sighs. "Think she's under that forgetful spell, too? Or can she find your girl?"

"Oh." Luna eyes Hedwig with anticipation. Magic has never worked correctly on Hedwig. They'd been surprised that the Fidelius even worked on Harry, with his extensive resistance to any mind control magic. As his familiar, Hedwig had a level of independent thought no non-magical animal should have. "Hedwig? Can you find my baby?"

It doesn't matter that it's been fourteen years. The nameless child is still Luna and Harry's baby. The owl hoots, climbing over Luna to climb into the passenger seat. Merle shrugs and climbs inside, kneeling on the floor near Luna as he slides the side door shut.

With an owl as their navigator, they start their journey again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some canon things need to be changed even from my earlier plans. Without the Shane/Lori affair and with Judith being Rick's, the fight at the Randall dropoff won't occur. So Luna is arriving earlier... As Carl needs saving.


	5. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul has company for his trek through the woods to find Carl and the others, Beth risks testing her gift on the ill and injured T-Dog, and Luna reaches the end of her journey.

Somehow, Paul isn’t surprised that the person that ends up following him isn’t the redneck, but a younger man, probably his own age. He almost asks the guy if he drew the short straw, but it seems a little mean. Glancing over his shoulder as he strides along a path that makes sense to him, but probably confuses his companion, he notes that Dale’s right. Guy is no woodsman, but he’s the naturally quiet sort in his movements.

“About two miles to the church from here,” Paul tells him, noting the relief on the other man’s face when he speaks. “We’ll head east from there. If they’re looking for the girl, they’re probably not going to be moving fast for fear they might overlook something.”

“Yeah. They’re both cops, too.” Glenn flashes him a smile. “Carl will slow them down. Too curious for his own good.”

“Typical boy then.” 

“Good kid. Needs a leash most days, though.”

“Sounds like me as a kid.” Chuckling, Paul snags a protein bar out of one of the outside pockets on his pack, remembering how hungry Sophia had been, offering it to Glenn. The grateful smile makes him wish he thought of it earlier.

“So you grew up here?” Glenn asks. Paul talking seems to have set him at ease about speaking.

“No. The Greenes adopted me when I was sixteen. Grew up in Atlanta.” Although Paul can see the curiosity in Glenn’s expression, the question stays unvoiced. He likes the empathy shown. “But the second I got turned loose on these woods, my father jokes they were lucky to get me indoors except when it was storming.”

Glenn glances around, shrugging. “I think I would have liked the woods better before the walkers.”

That makes Paul laugh again. “I would be worried about you if you preferred them now. We don’t usually see too many. They tend to cluster up on roadways, probably because going overland is more of an obstacle course to them than it is to a live person. The number of times I’ve found crippled ones from tumbling down an incline or even impaling themselves on fallen limbs is pretty high.”

He’s always put those down, even if he recognizes them. The conversation with Maggie reminds him that Beth’s misadventure distracted them from the task of taking care of the barn quietly. They’ll have to be even more careful now, since the farm will have visitors. Although on second thought, visitors might keep everything distracted just enough for them to pull it off.

“Those are sometimes more dangerous,” Glenn mutters. “If they’re being still.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

They lapse into silence until they reach the church. The evidence of the visitors is easily seen in the scuffed grass and soil. Glenn looks uneasily toward the building. “We put the walkers down inside.”

Paul hadn’t really bothered with them. They couldn’t get out, and he didn’t need access to the church. While he’s not as seeped in the Greene family religious beliefs as the others, it seemed a little sacrilegious to put anything down in front of a crucifix. “Alright. Makes sense if you were looking for the little girl.”

Heading east, tracking the two cops and the boy is easy enough. Like the redneck had said, they’re bulls in a china shop. When he catches the sideways look from Glenn when he scoffs at a broken limb on a tiny tree, he just shrugs. “One of our farm hands is a hunter. He thought it was a good focus for all my energy as a kid to get me out in the woods.”

Since Glenn seems curious, Paul keeps a running commentary of the things Otis taught him, back when he still wasn’t sure his place here was permanent. It passes the time, until they’re close enough to hear voices of the group they're tracking. “You wanna call out? Better you than a strange man.”

Glenn agrees with a sheepish grin. “Hey, Rick? Shane?”

There’s a clear “What the hell is Glenn all the way out here for?” from one of the men, both of whom spot Paul as they come into sight and immediately move the boy behind them. It’s a maneuver Paul heartily approves of.

“This is Paul,” Glenn calls out. “His sister found Sophia.”

The relief on the men’s faces is bright and vivid, especially the slimmer of the two men. “When we found your camp on the highway, your man with the cut arm was really sick. He went back with my other sister to the farm.”

“Dale and Lori were loading everyone up to go to the farm,” Glenn explains. “We’ve been invited to stay a few days and resupply before we go back looking for Benning.”

“That’s mighty nice of your family,” the slimmer man says, stepping forward to offer his hand. “Rick Grimes. This is my partner, Shane Walsh, and my son, Carl.”

Paul shakes his hand before jerking his head toward the southeasterly direction they need to shift to. “Just over a mile this way, as the crow flies.”

Something about that makes Glenn snicker, drawing looks from everyone. “Sorry. Daryl said the same thing to Andrea earlier. She reminded him we aren’t crows.”

“Definitely make navigating the woods a lot easier to flit from tree to tree,” Shane mutters. 

“Oh! Look, Dad!”

The deer Carl spots is holding stock still. Any other time, Paul might consider taking a shot at it, but the kid looks so damn happy he eases the rifle back into place over his shoulder. Rick shoots him a grateful look.

“Don’t get too close, Carl. Deer can be as dangerous as carnivores if they’re spooked, and that’s a good sized buck,” Paul cautions. “It can come at you like a charging bull if it takes a mind to it.” It’s not time for the rut yet, but they’re getting close enough, and the damned walkers probably have any wildlife on edge.

Of course, the lure of a deer so close means the kid doesn’t listen. Paul’s too far away. Hell, all of them are too far away, when the deer shifts and charges.

The kid’s scream ranks up there with one of the worst things Paul’s ever seen. The men draw their guns, even as the deer traps the boy on the ground. Their handguns aren’t meant for this, and both are obviously equally terrified of hitting the kid with a shot. 

Dropping to one knee, Paul levels his rifle and aims carefully. He can’t get a headshot in, not with the buck using his antlers to pin the boy. Carl’s got ahold of the antlers by some miracle, but his terrified screaming is keeping the animal enraged. Praying as he’s never prayed before, Paul takes the shot.

The deer shudders under the impact, falling to the ground and struggling to get back up with a bellow of pain. It’s not dead, but it gives the two cops room to run forward and snatch the boy away. Shane fires his weapon once Carl’s clear, the Glock easily stopping the buck from bellowing. 

Paul’s shot wasn’t a kill shot. It had only paralyzed the buck, so he’s grateful for the deputy’s shot. 

“Oh, Jesus, Carl.” Rick is sobbing and frantic, trying to stop the bleeding from where the buck got Carl with an antler before the boy figured out how to grab on. He’s got a lot of cuts and abrasions, maybe broken bones, but it’s the tearing damage to Carl’s arm, chest, and shoulder that has his father terrified.

Glenn sheds his outer shirt when Paul orders, even as Paul shucks his pack, unearthing the first aid kit Hershel insists they all carry. “We need to get pressure on the wounds. Get him to the farm, and my father can fix this.”

As he passes supplies to Shane, knowing the deputy probably has even better training than he does on emergency care, he strips off his belt and so does Glenn. Both get used in securing the pressure bandages, and Rick lifts the boy into his arms.

They set off for the farm at a run.

~*~*~*~

Beth has her chores done by the time Maggie returns with Morgan and two others. The injured man is resting on the couch, after the first thing Patricia did was make him shower. Patricia declared there was no sense treating the wound if the man was still fetid with grime and gore.

Her father didn’t like the discussion about why the man was so messy, but he’s not going to turn a sick man away. Beth watched, careful not to touch, when Patricia and Maggie finished cleaning the wound, explaining it shouldn’t be stitched up, once it was already infected. It’ll mean more supplies to change the bandages, but better that than the man lose his arm.

The girl that came with them is showering now, and she looks like Christmas came early when told to go easy on the hot water. Beth carries the plate and glass into the living room, smiling at the injured newcomer. “I didn’t catch your name when Maggie brought y’all in,” she apologizes. “But I figure everyone likes eggs and sausage. Got a biscuit leftover from breakfast.”

Patricia always makes too many, tucking the leftover biscuits in the crock on the counter. They’re snacks of sorts, mostly for Paul, Jimmy, or Beth, but she’s seen her father and Otis slipping one of the fluffy things out from time to time, too. It’s the tradition Beth’s mama started, and Patricia continues it faithfully, all those extra biscuits.

He takes the plate with a grateful smile, thanking her as she sets the glass of iced tea on a coaster. “Most folks call me T-Dog.”

She giggles, watching as Rocky stays on alert because of the word ‘dog’, wagging his tail. “T-Dog? Sounds a little strange. I’m Beth, and that’s Rocky.”

Setting the plate in his lap, he offers her a hand. “Theodore Douglas is the name my mama gave me.”

Biting her lip to brace if anything goes wrong, she shakes his hand, smiling brightly when nothing happens. He’s sick, yes, but death isn’t hovering. Rocky ventures into the room, going up to sit next to the couch and drop his chin on the couch.

“He waiting on me to drop something?” T-Dog asks, watching the dog curiously. 

“Not really. He just knows you’re hurt.” She takes a seat in one of the chairs, swinging her feet. They got lucky this time, but if she has a vision, why not prepare their visitors? “I get seizures sometimes. My brother trained him to be my service dog.”

“Oh. Well, guess if he’s calm, then I should be, right?”

“Yes, sir.” 

Something sets Rocky off, and this time it isn’t Beth. Wondering what he hears as he darts out of the room, the yipping pitch of his bark meant to alert, Beth gives chase. In the field, there are people running. She recognizes Paul easily, and he’s starting to pace ahead of the group, shouting for their father. 

As Beth spots the boy in one of the other men’s arms, she wants to scream in frustration. Otis didn’t go into the woods. This wasn’t supposed to happen! Turning into the house, she yells to summon her father and Maggie, letting them run by her into the yard. She doesn’t stay put, though, running after them with Rocky following.

“What happened?” Hershel demands as they reach them. “Is he shot?”

There’s a man in the deputy uniform, just like her vision, and another man who looks familiar. The third man is an unknown, although he looks just as frantic as the first two men and her brother. It’s the deputy who answers. “Buck gored him in the woods.”

“God have mercy,” her father exclaims softly. “Let’s get him inside. Beth! Get the bed ready in the guest room.”

Beth turns and runs, doing as bidden, hands shaking as she yanks away the bedding in time for Patricia to fling a layer of protective padding down. Once the boy is on the bed, everyone goes to work, movements frantic but sure. 

“Daddy? How can I help?” she asks, edging as close as she can without getting in their way. He orders the father away, and the man backs up to be propped up by his friend. His gaze never leaves his son’s battered and bleeding form.

There’s a moment when Hershel pauses, and he looks haunted, so she knows he’ll ask before he opens his mouth. “Help me hold pressure right here while I check his chest.”

Taking over the padded bandage on the boy’s bare shoulder, Beth closes her eyes and lets her left hand make more contact with skin than bandage. When her eyes flutter open, she can see Hershel, gaze on her instead of his patient, and she smiles.

Whatever mess this becomes, death’s not coming for this visitor, either.

~*~*~*~

There’s such an argument going on in the yard of the farmhouse when Michonne parks the little RV that no one seems to actually notice they’ve arrived. Luna blots her nose with the bandana Merle hands her from where they’re still sitting on the floor in the back. He’s replaced all her old traditional handkerchiefs with garish paisley things that at least make bloodstains less graphic.

She groans, leaning against him, her head aching hard enough it feels like it will split open. It’s not just a vision. The bubbling feeling in her brain is almost non-existent, feeling more like one ending than beginning. It feels like there’s a wild animal in her skull trying to claw its way out.

“Luna? You need us to leave?” Michonne sounds so concerned. Since pain often prevents Luna from acting on a vision, she supposes leaving sounds sensible. Maybe they’re here too soon.

Hedwig hoots, drawing all their attention to the crowd outside the farmhouse.

“Holy shit,” Merle breathes out, sounding amazed. “I see my baby brother.”

“Open the door,” Luna pleads. Her stomach is joining her head in rebelling, boiling like a shaken fizzy drink about to spew. “I’m gonna be sick.”

It’s funny how the sound of vomiting makes everyone shut up. Luna misses some things, namely whatever reason Michonne is in between Luna and Merle, but facing the others, sword drawn. He’s tense as he keeps Luna from tipping out of the vehicle into the puddle of sick. 

Her whimpering draws Merle’s attention back to her. “I’ve been here before,” she whispers. Barriers are crumbling in her head, getting buried under a deluge, but it’s holding. Memory is a bare trickle, fighting the still unraveling spell. “I remember now. I need to see someone. I need to understand it all.”

He forgets the others and lifts her out of the RV, carrying her bridal style. The crumbling barrier gives way even more as they approach the porch, and she makes a high pitched whining sound that she wishes she could stop, because it makes her head hurt even more.

Merle’s speaking, and she can’t focus enough to comprehend it. 

Gentle hands touch her face, rotating her head so that she’s looking toward the person. Kind blue eyes meet hers, and something unfurls amidst the barely standing blocks in her memory. “I think I know you.”

“Oh, sweetheart, you do know me.” He strokes her sweaty hair back from her forehead before placing a tender kiss on it, even as Merle stands patiently holding her. His whisper is so soft, she’s not sure even Merle can hear it. “The secret you seek is your daughter, Lilibeth Pandora Greene. I call her Beth.”

Luna begins to sob as the barriers fail completely, filling in the blank spaces in her mind. “Uncle Hershel.” She knows this kind man and loves him dearly. How cruel a spell to make her forget that! 

Reaching for him, he accepts her weight from Merle easily as she weeps against his chest. After the hellish months of being lost and feeling alone despite Michonne, Andre, and then Merle, she’s home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, things are vague by the time Luna arrives, but that's deliberate. Next chapter will sort out what happened between Carl arriving on the farm and the heated argument in the farmyard. There may be some extra POVs used for that chapter, not just the primary three.


	6. What Did You See?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth's visions cause strife between the visitors and the Greenes, before Luna's arrival diverts everyone to figuring out the new arrival - and why Hershel asks her to help Carl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This timeline is definitely not perfectly linear for this chapter, with both Glenn and Shane's POVs overlapping the end scene from last chapter (and each other a bit), with Luna's finally moving things forward again.

~*~ Glenn ~*~

Glenn retreats out of the guest room turned emergency room, taking himself outside to the porch to watch for any of their people to arrive. T-Dog and Amy join him, both looking freshly scrubbed. The older man is still feverish, but looks like maybe someone gave him some decent painkillers to go with his fresh white bandage secured with medical tape instead of electrical.

“What happened?” Amy asked, looking paler than he thought was possible. “Did Carl get bitten?”

Shaking his head, Glenn sighs. “No. A big buck out in the woods charged at him. Took him down like it was nothing.”

A throat clears behind them, and Glenn turns to see the slim, long-haired man who he followed into the woods. Even with the tense worry lines on his face in place of the bright smile he wore earlier, he’s the prettiest male Glenn thinks he’s ever seen. That might explain the carefully trimmed facial hair lining his jaw. It’s not a full beard by any means, but it’s still definitely a masculine statement. 

“Animals are extra defensive these days. It probably thought the boy was a walker.”

“They actually fight those things?” Glenn remembers the deer the walker was feasting on outside the quarry camp with a grimace. Then again, that deer was wounded and weak, already suffering blood loss from Daryl’s crossbow bolts.

“Some animals do. Big buck like that, grown into his antlers in preparation for the rut? Definitely. Our cattle have stomped some to pieces. I’ve found ones that look like they were mauled by other predators, like bobcats or bears, and coyote packs see them as fair game.” Paul looks reluctantly impressed by the coyote part.

There’s a hum of vehicles coming up the long driveway, and Paul steps out into the yard to greet them as they park and unload. “Y’all shut the gates, right? You always shut farm gates, but especially now with the dead out there.”

With the sheepish looks on several faces, Glenn realizes they didn’t. “I’ll go take care of it,” he offers. “You need to get Lori inside.”

At his mention of her name, Lori steps forward. “What’s wrong, Glenn?”

Glenn looks at Paul, who sighs before he speaks. “Your son was attacked by a deer in the woods, ma’am. He’s inside with my dad, getting patched up.”

That’s all the woman needs to know, and she’s smart enough to follow the voices to locate Shane and Rick, so Glenn sets about the task he volunteered for. When Paul follows alongside, Glenn’s more than a little relieved, and not just because the other man is so pretty. This isn’t his best territory, out in the rural depths of Georgia. He’s a city boy, born and bred. Atlanta appealed because cities are cities, regardless of whether they’re in Georgia or Michigan.

“Are all your people so careless with their safety?” Paul asks. Even though they have to return back through the gates, he still closes each one behind them. “I mean, not knowing farm etiquette is one thing, but they opened gates and left them that way when cannibals roam everywhere right now.”

How does Glenn argue with that? He can’t, so he shrugs. “I think most of them haven’t really absorbed the reality of everything all the way yet. Plus the two who would actually pay attention were already at your farm.” Something tells him that either Rick or Shane would have considered closing the gates as a safety issue, especially after the herd on the highway. He’s honestly a little surprised Daryl didn’t, but the redneck had been in the lead on the motorcycle, probably the one to open the gates in the first place.

Paul just sighs. “They need to learn, or accidents like the boy’s are going to keep happening.”

The idea of what happened to Carl makes Glenn’s stomach churn. Paul had been telling Carl to be careful, but the boy was too enraptured by the idea of the deer to listen. If the other man hadn’t gotten off that precise shot with his rifle, the boy might not have survived.

Glenn nods, absorbing the chastisement with his usual calm nature and falling silent. It doesn’t take long to reach the second gate, the one that’s about ten feet off the highway where the vehicles turned off. Once it’s locked, they reverse course, and halfway back to the farmhouse, Paul apparently decides to have pity on the city boy. 

“Look, I don't mean to be so harsh,” he says, voice pitched to soothe. “You obviously are trying to learn. I’ll take you out on a hunt, if you like.”

With a bright smile of relief, Glenn agrees. He’s wanted to learn more woodcraft, but with his choices being Daryl or Shane, he’s not really felt up to asking. Daryl seems a little friendlier these days, after laughing his ass off at seeing the sparkly bent bobby pin on the roof in Atlanta and no sign of his brother. That doesn’t make him any less intimidating to Glenn. Shane’s so wrapped up in the miraculous return of Rick that he doesn’t have much time for anyone not named Grimes.

Paul’s right. They all need to learn, or the consequences will be dire.

~*~ Shane ~*~

Once Carl’s turned over to the seemingly capable hands of the veterinarian and the ladies of the household, Shane edges backward out of the way. Rick can barely keep himself out from underfoot, anguished in a way only a father who just watched his only son get gored by a wild animal can be. He only really backs off when the tiny blonde teenager leaves off helping her daddy and literally pushes him back and back until he’s in the foyer with Shane.

“You need to stay out of the way. Don’t go far in case Daddy needs someone to give blood, like he said, but all you’re doing right now is making everything too crowded.”

The girl can’t be a day over fourteen, and she’s a good five or six inches shorter than Rick and Shane both and might weigh a hundred pounds on a good day. She makes up for it with the fierceness Shane associates with small females, glaring at Rick until even his brother wilts under the stare. Once he does, the glare melts into a sweet smile.

“There’s a bathroom right over there. Why don’t you go wash up a bit? I’ll get you a fresh shirt from my brother’s room.” When Rick seems a little nonverbal, she turns to Shane. Something shifts in her expression, as if she recognizes him, and he wonders why his brain registers the emotion as ‘fear’ before it’s gone, hidden behind a teenager’s cheerful smile. “Okay, you go get him washed up then.”

She trots off up the stairs, and after a glance into the room where Carl is shows Shane that nothing big is happening yet, he guides Rick away. The girl’s right. They all got blood on them out in the woods, but Rick looks like an extra in a horror movie. Wetting the bandana from his pocket, Shane cleans away the worst of the blood on Rick’s skin, speaking softly like he would to any parent after witnessing a trauma involving their child.

He’ll have his own personal breakdown over what happened to Carl later, when Rick isn’t about to fall apart before his eyes.

Half an hour later, he wishes he’d figured out that weird expression the teenage girl had, because when Hershel Greene requests a medical supply run, the blonde loses her shit about Otis offering to go with Shane. Tiny as she is, she plants herself firmly between Shane and the man who probably outweighs her by a good hundred pounds or more. One of her hands fists in the farm hand’s sweat stained gray shirt as if she’s attaching herself as an appendage. The other grabs the big man’s wrist.

“NO! Otis doesn’t leave the farm!” It’s high pitched and nearly hysterical, and every single member of the Greenes turns to look at the girl with an expression of intense concern. A small dog Shane hasn’t noticed before lopes up, yipping and circling to cut off the girl and the man, just as the teenager screams and seizes. Her delicate body convulses, and Otis reacts instantly, lowering her to the ground and rolling her to her side.

Jesus Christ. It’s an epileptic seizure, and adds to the already shitty day Shane’s having. Sophia lost and found, Carl’s injuries, and now another child in distress. Her family has it well in hand, so all he can do is try to back his group off and give them room.

To his surprise, Daryl grabs his arm at the bicep in a firm grip. “Don’t need the big guy to make a medical supply run. You’re a damned cop. You know what the fucking stuff looks like, dontcha?”

Technically, he does. He’s certainly seen the packaging ripped open and used by EMTs on more scenes that he cares to think about. Just because he doesn’t know how to intubate someone doesn’t mean he’s ignorant of the equipment. He nods.

“Soon as the girl’s clear, we ask directions and go, then. Take Glenn’s skinny little ass if we need to access something locked up.” 

The offer is surprising, but so has most of Daryl’s behavior with his brother gone on the lam. It’s like without the older, more assholish Dixon around, the younger brother actually has a bit of a personality. Since most of it seems to center around a hell of a soft spot for kids, Shane thinks he’s safe with the other man at his back. When Shane looks for Glenn, the young Korean is back, along with Paul, and he knows he doesn’t even have to ask if Glenn will help.

It’s so quiet in the yard that Hershel’s voice carries all too well when Beth’s seizure stops. “What did you see this time, Bethie?”

What the hell kind of question is that? It could be some sort of routine to soothe the girl, a way to get back in touch with reality. But that theory’s blown away when Beth answers him.

“A herd, Daddy. It took the whole farm.” She’s sitting upright now, but gropes around her until she’s in contact with Otis. The big farm hand complies with her clutching at him by hugging her close where he’s sitting on his ass in the dirt beside her. “Otis, Patricia, the boy’s dad, they all got eaten. Plus four other people I don’t know.”

Teary blue eyes scan Shane’s people, and she stuffs her fist in front of her mouth to stifle a sob before edging it down. “The older man with the hat, the tall man with the beard, the woman next to him, and the lady that looks like Amy.”

That’s when the shouting erupts, because what the girl’s saying sounds crazy even in a world where dead cannibals doddle around the landscape. Lori’s freaked out about the mere idea that something might happen to Rick, crying out that it’s a sick joke. He can’t blame her, not really. Between being four months pregnant, Carl being hurt, and everything else going on, it’s just too much for her nerves.

She isn’t the only one, and the clamor makes even Shane miss the new arrivals until the unmistakable sound of forceful vomiting catches everyone’s attention. There’s some sort of small RV parked next to their vehicles, with an open side door allowing someone to heave on the ground instead of inside. He can’t see whoever it is, and he’s not the only one who reacts with a drawn gun.

Even Hershel’s older daughter has made a handgun appear as if by magic. She doesn’t seem to recognize the vehicle then, so it’s not some of their people coming home. He spares a brief thought about a hidden holster inside her waist band, even as a tall, dreadlocked woman steps out of the driver’s seat. She doesn’t draw a gun as she eases around the nose of the vehicle, putting her body between whoever’s in the back of the van and the crowd in front of her.

It’s not until Daryl strides forward that she goes for a weapon, halting the redneck with the tip of a damn katana at his throat. Even Daryl’s bluster fades under the woman’s dead stare. He doesn’t throw up his hands like any sane man would, but he does take a single step backwards.

“That’s my brother with you, woman.”

Oh, shit, is all Shane can think, because there’s movement where he can actually see now, a man drawing up to full height. Merle Dixon has reappeared like a bad smell, looking no worse for wear than when he disappeared. He glances toward the woman with the katana and his brother, but doesn’t call her off. Instead, he leans back into the RV and lifts someone into his arms.

Shane can’t tell if the blonde is a grown woman or a teenager, not with the way Merle cradles her to his chest regardless of the blood that gets smeared against his gray undershirt from the bandana the blonde is using to try to stop a nosebleed. Merle exchanges a look with Daryl, but he shoulders by the younger man, intent on reaching someone.

That turns out to be Hershel Greene, who is walking toward Merle, all his attention on the girl in his arms. The old man looks like he’s seen a ghost as he reaches out toward her, smoothing a hand over her hair. “Oh, Luna, you made it home,” he says softly.

Reassessing his idea that the new arrivals aren’t known to the Greenes, Shane glances toward Maggie, but the woman looks as confused as everyone else.

“You the family Moonchild’s been looking all over Georgia for?” Merle rumbles. The girl’s hand clutches in the leather of his vest as she makes some sort of high pitched sound and gags. 

When Hershel rotates the blonde’s head toward him so she can see him, the girl mumbles something Shane can’t make out. Hershel replies with equal quiet. The sobbed, “Uncle Hershel” results in Merle transferring the girl to the older man’s arms as crying begins in earnest.

Hershel carries her to the porch with surprising strength, settling her into a rocking chair and kneeling to take her hands. All his children look completely confused, although Maggie is shaking her head as if some flying pest was zooming around her, while blinking rapidly. Otis and the younger girl move forward, with the teenager finally turning Otis loose to venture up the steps as if she’s being pulled toward the newcomer.

It occurs to Shane then that the two blondes have a family resemblance that defies anything Beth has in common with Maggie or Paul. Some instinct tells him that they’re about to be in the middle of something more complicated than a stray family member’s return.

All the chaos of the argument is gone, faded amidst the newer drama unfolding before them. 

~*~ Luna ~*~

As much as her heart craves actually seeing her daughter after fourteen years that she didn’t, she isn’t so selfish to demand it. It’s a secret shared between her and Hershel, and revealing it to the sweet girl without any preparation would be cruel and inhuman. She’s settled into a chair, with Hershel backing off to crouch in front of the rocking chair on the porch. He wipes tears and blood from her face, looking as kind as she’s ever known him.

“Luna? Where’s Harry?” 

That isn’t a secret she has to tell, because he sees it in her gaze, discerning the information as easily as any Legilimens would. There are no more tears in Luna for Harry. Those are long since shed. But it’s still soothing when he clasps her hands. “I am so sorry for your loss. He was a good man.”

There are so many curious eyes on them that Luna isn’t sure where to start. Merle and Michonne aren’t far, with Andre on his mother’s hip. She doesn’t see Hedwig, but that doesn’t mean much. The owl is around here somewhere. The man with the crossbow who looks like he can’t decide between hanging onto Merle like a leech or punching him in the face. Daryl, she bets. 

The strangest sight is when she meets the eyes of a delicate blonde who looks like she stepped out of Luna’s Hogwarts years, minus the Ravenclaw robes. The girl has her hair tilted, and she keeps easing forward a half step at a time.

Oh. She isn’t a baby anymore, but Luna can’t mistake her for anyone else. Beth. She’s so beautiful, with the fey look common to every woman in Pandora Lovegood’s bloodline. Exhaustion shows in the girl’s slumped shoulders, and Luna understands the feeling.

“Daddy?” 

Hershel turns to look at Beth, who smiles wanly before looking back to two others on the porch now. The woman, Luna recognizes her even though she was a gangly teenager when Luna saw her last. She grew into the coltish limbs, and obviously the spell is itching at her somehow, because she can’t stop rubbing her forehead. The man isn’t Shawn, but he eases up to Beth and wraps an arm around her like any brother would. 

The oldest Greene clears his throat. “This is Luna. She’s part of my family from Ireland.”

It settles most of the watching people to have an explanation, but Maggie frowns even more as another familiar face appears in the farmhouse door. Patricia, her memory supplies. She wonders where Annette and Shawn are, since she spies Otis near the steps. So many beloved faces to ease the ache in her heart where Luna’s family in Britain should be.

“Hershel? I think we need to hurry for those supplies. The boy’s blood pressure is dropping more than I like. We should start giving him blood.”

“Someone’s hurt?” Luna queries, struggling to sit up. The worst of the physical effects of her whatever magic causes her visions fighting the secrecy spell is passing now that there’s no war for dominance going on in Luna’s brain.

“A boy. He was attacked by an animal in the woods,” Hershel explains, and then the worried furrow that appeared between his brow when Patricia appeared fades. “Would you be able to help?”

She knows what he’s asking. Luna’s goal to become a healer would be something the older man remembers, and she smiles weakly. “Yes, if Merle would go fetch my bag.”

It doesn’t even need repeating, because the older man jogs off without any hesitation, bringing back the battered backpack with all the care of someone holding the most fragile treasure in the world. Merle still has an awe of her magic that might not ever fade. Taking the bag, she gets to her feet and wobbles inside, directed by Hershel’s hand on her shoulder.

“Is she a doctor?” someone questions behind her as she reaches the bed and the battered little boy. Something about him reminds her of Harry when he was young, when he spent more time in the infirmary than even a foolhardy wizarding boy should.

“Oh, you poor little dear. This just won’t do.”

Rummaging in her backpack, she begins to tip jars, vials, and bottles out onto the bed next to him with little regards for breakage. The spells preventing that haven’t faded entirely, not yet. So few supplies, compared to what she would normally carry as a healer. Finding ingredients is hard, and a few of them won’t be reproducible, not with the purely magical animal based ingredients disappearing.

“You can give him blood, right?” she asks Hershel. There’s a single vial of Blood Replenishing Potion left, but muggle means are often a bit better, especially with an unconscious patient. It’s also one she can’t replace, not with the potion recipe she knows. “Has he had any painkillers?”

“We’ve started him on pain meds and antibiotics, along with fluids,” Hershel tells her. “But he’s got several broken ribs, a punctured lung, and the puncture wound from the antler.”

Peeling back the bandages on the boy’s chest, Luna nods. “You look like you’ve gone a few rounds with the Whomping Willow and lost, poppet.” Looking up at the confused people in the doorway that are probably the boy’s parents, she hums thoughtfully before turning to Hershel. “Get things set up to give him blood, however much you would normally think he needs. Two pints?”

While she reads about muggle medicine out of curiosity and a longtime friendship with Hermione, it’s not her best area of knowledge. All the extras about blood types and blood congealing and whatnot is easily overridden by potions in her chosen career.

Hershel turns to the parents, focusing on the father. “You wouldn’t happen to know the boy’s blood type, would you?”

The man nods. “A positive, just like mine.”

That gets him ushered into a seat, while the pregnant woman hovers, torn between figuring out what Luna’s doing with her son and what Hershel’s setting up with her husband. Luna ignores her, as she would any distraught family member, but then decides that maybe what she’s going to need to do might need some sort of demonstration. Opening the tub of cream she used on Merle’s wrist, she waits until the mother is watching before liberally smearing it along a jagged cut on the boy’s cheekbone, held together by little strips of sticky plasters.

The disappearing wound makes the brunette gasp. It’s not completely gone like it would be if the child was magical, leaving behind a rough and pink ridge of scar tissue, but that’s all that’s left of a raw wound that nearly cost the boy his eye. While the woman tries to comprehend the impossibility of what she just saw, Luna lifts the boy into her arms and begins the tedious routine of convincing an unconscious patient to swallow potions. What she wouldn’t give to have her wand and the ability to safely spell the contents of each vial into his stomach directly.

“How did you do that?” his mother asks, voice squeaking with emotion as the horrible puncture wound slowly knits together, leaving tender, delicate skin behind.

“Magic,” Luna replies, smiling at her patient as the boy’s vivid blue eyes flutter open. 

Death won’t find this little one, not today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With no one left to naysay her, Luna obviously doesn't worry about revealing magic... Thought I would get in the POVs for two of the significant others for the story. Whether or not they'll show up in later chapters, who knows?
> 
> Regarding Beth's vision: the story is now heavily AU. By changing things so heavily for Otis's fate, Beth's scrambled things for the rest. In case it was too vague, the deaths she saw from the herd were Otis, Patricia, Rick, Dale, Jim, Jacqui, and Andrea. There will be more about the vision later, once the excitement of Carl's magical cure settles down.
> 
> A slight AU reminder: no Shane/Lori affair in this one. Lori's about 4 months pregnant with Judith, so the baby is Rick's.


	7. Understanding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luna's explanation of how she saved Carl leads her to finding out something about his former group that horrifies her.

~*~ Luna ~*~

Once the boy is awake and asking questions, Luna learns his name is Carl. She edges away from the bed after collecting her things back into her pack, letting his parents cluster around him. Between her own issues with her gift and the spell warring against each other, and then helping the boy, Luna realizes her shirt is a bloody mess. 

While they’re distracted, she slips out of the room. She knows it is a bit cowardly to leave Hershel to answer the questions, but her head feels stuffed full of cotton. It’s like a hangover, without the fun of drinking to induce it.

Her stealth comes to an end on the porch, where there are too many anxious eyes focused on anyone coming out of the house. “He’s going to be just fine,” she tells the onlookers. “Although Uncle Hershel may need another blood donor to be on the safe side, if anyone is type A positive.”

Luna doesn’t even know her blood type, as it was never necessary for magical healing. Perhaps she should see how one goes about finding that out, since it would be more necessary now.

“Type O can donate, too, if there’s A available,” the young man who had stood with Beth on the porch tells her. “I’ll do it, if Dad needs me to.”

Several more people also volunteer, so once Luna is convinced the boy has enough blood on offer to completely replenish his entire blood supply, she smiles. In the magical world, blood has so much potential for damaging magical use, even if blood magic is mostly banned, that it’s interesting to see muggles just offer up such a resource without hesitation. It shows they have goodness among them, she hopes.

A tall, dark-haired man steps up to the porch. “Can I go inside now? Carl... he’s my family.”

“I’m sure his parents will be happy to have you with them,” Luna tells him. He smiles gratefully, pausing to thank her before passing her to go inside.

“Would you like to get cleaned up?” It’s the man who started the blood donation offers, the one of the Greenes she doesn’t recognize. He’s younger than Maggie in appearance, but that doesn’t always mean he actually is, as Luna looks younger herself. 

“I was going to change. My bag is in the RV.” She motions to the small vehicle while looking for Merle and Michonne. She finds both of them talking to the man she thinks is Daryl with Andre on Michonne’s hip. It seems well in hand for now, since the brothers aren’t fighting like Merle admits they often do.

“I’m Paul,” he tells her, offering a hand. “And if you want to bring your bag inside, we’ve got generator power enough that you could shower if you keep it brief.”

Luna smiles brightly at him. “Well, that would be delightful. Thank you.”

Once she’s retrieved her bag and signalled Michonne that she’s going back inside, Paul leads her into the house. Now that she’s less frantic, Luna remembers this house so well. She pauses by the living room, staring at the photos. “It’s been a long time since I was here, more than a decade,” she tells him, “but some of the happiest months of my life were spent in this house.”

They’d been happy months despite knowing that she was going to leave her baby here and not remember any of the details. Luna’s father had been a good man, in his own way, but life among a family like the Greenes had proven to her that her own childhood was as rife with neglect as Harry’s had been. Xenophilus hadn’t been abusive, but that didn’t mean he’d been a good father, either. It made her feel safe, leaving her baby, her little Beth, here, and Hershel kept his word that he would never risk Beth’s life by contacting her and Harry.

Paul joins her in looking at the photos. “The Greenes adopted me when I was a teenager. I’d given up hope of getting that luck and having a family.” He reaches out to trace Annette’s face in one of them, looking unbelievably sad, and Luna knows then, why she hasn’t seen the kind woman.

“Annette died, didn’t she?” she asks softly, feeling tears well up.

“Yes.” He swallows hard, turning to look at her. “She and Shawn both.”

That’s enough to make Luna’s tears spill over, trickling silently down her cheeks. Annette had a long and full life for a muggle, but Shawn? He’d been a teenager when Luna was here, so he was still far too young to die. She foolishly thought she’d already lost all the family she could lose, aside from the daughter she could remember, but had no details for, but she was wrong.

Paul proves himself a Greene when he wraps his arms around her and lets her cry against his chest. It’s a kindness that reminds her of both Harry and Neville in different ways, to comfort someone they barely knew. She hopes it isn’t because he learned to give solace after he was never given it when he was young, but the world rarely is that kind to good people, she’s found. Eventually, they part, and she goes to lose herself for a bit under the guise of getting clean.

When Luna ventures downstairs, feeling much refreshed from a shower that has real water pressure compared to the tiny closet bathroom in the RV, she isn’t surprised to find that the boy’s family is waiting for her. Their expressions are torn between gratitude and confusion, like many muggles when they first learn of magic. 

“I wasn’t sure how much to explain, Luna,” Hershel tells her from where he’s sitting at the kitchen table with the confused strangers, whom he introduces to Luna. Maggie and Beth are hovering nearby, and she imagines Patricia is probably sitting watch over the sleeping boy. “But I suspect it won’t stay a secret now that I’ve told their people they can stay a few days to make sure the boy’s fully recovered. Paul and Otis are helping them set up camp. No one’s come in to protest you using magic in front of them yet.”

Luna would prefer to sort out her own confusing situation first, but letting Hershel end the secret completely won’t be something that they can deal with quickly. She has no idea how Beth and Maggie will react, and they deserve to have that happen in privacy. Taking a seat at the kitchen table, she accepts a glass of water from Maggie, but her attention stays more on Beth, drinking in the sight of her beautiful daughter as she begins to explain.

“No one will be coming to protest, Hershel,” she admits. “The magical governments collapsed even faster than the non-magical ones.” Reverting to the term that Hermione preferred for muggles feels so odd, but it makes more sense for this explanation than muggle or the American no-maj.

“There’s non-magical governments?” Maggie asks, sounding confused. It’s sad for Luna to realize, because Maggie had been in the know, part of a loophole allowed because her paternal grandparents had both been magical. She hadn’t known her grandfather, but Hershel’s mother had lived long enough for Maggie and Shawn to be exposed to magic before they ever met Luna. The spell erased a lot of memories to protect Beth fully.

“There were.” Luna sighs, sipping at the water. “It’s always been safer for magic to stay secret, after the witch hunts. The Statute of Secrecy prevents magicals from performing magic around non-magicals, and when it used to happen, memories were always altered to protect magical society.” 

“That doesn’t sound very damn fair to the non-magicals,” Shane sounds offended, like most muggles Luna has met. She can’t really blame him, but she also knows it was safer for both societies to keep apart.

“I doubt it was, but magicals were such a small minority that the fear of the witch hunts returning was a powerful motivator. It doesn’t matter anymore. The virus is even more vicious toward magicals than non-magicals.”

“How is it more vicious?” Hershel asks, looking forlorn. Remembering Annette and Shawn’s deaths, Luna reaches out and takes one of his hands.

“Magicals don’t turn, but they die within hours of contracting the virus, either as an illness or by being bitten. Even amputating a bitten arm or leg doesn’t help, although we got word out of the non-magical London hospitals that they had success with that if done within the first hour of being bitten. No one is immune, not like non-magicals, who all carry the virus but a small number can’t get sick from it until they’re actually bitten to get a second infection of it.”

“What about you?” Hershel very carefully doesn’t look at Beth, and Luna understands the unspoken part of the question. Beth doesn’t seem to know about magic, but something’s going on there that Luna will investigate later.

Luna sets her water glass down and stands, pulling up her shirt to reveal the bite-shaped scar just above the waistline of her faded cargo pants. “St. Mungo’s Hospital was overrun, and we were trying to evacuate patients who weren’t infected. I was distracted, trying to get the children to safety, and got bitten in the streets outside the hospital,” she admits softly. “Harry used a ritual to exchange himself for me, and because he was who he was, Death accepted.” 

She hasn’t even admitted this to Michonne and Merle yet, so it feels wrong to be sharing it with these three people she doesn’t know in the room while the two people she’s adopted as family are outside. The trio looks more confused than upset, but then again, they don’t have enough knowledge to have prejudice toward blood magic to know that what Harry did was illegal among his kind.

“He just couldn’t face losing anyone else. Everyone else we knew was already gone, dead from either the virus or to the dead themselves. All our protections were designed to keep us secret from living non-magicals. They didn’t do a thing to keep the dead away, and there were so many more of them than there were of us.”

Teddy had been one of the earliest victims of the virus, and Luna still isn’t entirely sure that Andromeda’s death fighting the hordes that tried to invade Diagon Alley wasn’t just a form of suicide. The Weasleys mostly died fighting, although they’d lost every single child to the virus as if it couldn’t resist infecting their family line. Luna’s father had been attacked on a trip to London, his broken wand and tattered remains found not far from the phone booth entrance to the Ministry. Neville, dear sweet Neville, he died defending children at Hogwarts, a hero to the end.

The deaths just kept coming and coming, and not being able to turn only meant that a bitten family member didn’t cannibalize their loved ones like among the muggles.

“Why didn’t more people do whatever ritual he did?” Lori asks, glancing toward the bedroom where her son is sleeping off the side effects of quickly healed injuries and blood loss. “To save their families or children?”

“Not everyone is capable of both the magic and the required self-sacrifice. Many died trying to save their children, but most magicals simply didn’t have the power, even if they had the knowledge. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what he did, because the ritual it resembled shouldn’t have worked that way. Maybe the closest thing to compare it to would be the old stories about sacrificing to the old gods.”

Those stories are far truer than even many in the magical world believed, but those gods had needed widespread belief to continue to exist. As the world modernized, they faded away into nothing, the same way everything purely magical seems to be doing now. Harry’s peculiar relationship with Death was akin to those old world priests, even if the Hallows legend would deem him Master of Death.

“How you healed Carl, could you do that again if someone was hurt?” Rick inquires.

“With the right supplies, yes. The biggest problem is that magic is dying.” Luna lets go of Hershel’s hand and draws her wand from the special pocket stitched into her cargo pants and lays the deceptively delicate looking thing on the table. “European and North American witches and wizards use a wand to focus their magic. Once, I could demonstrate all sorts of charms and spells for you. Now? It’s just a very pretty stick with a lot of sentimental value.”

The intricately carved wand is one of the few custom wands Ollivander ever made for anyone, as a gift for keeping him safe in the Malfoy dungeons. The rowan wood, to draw on her Irish heritage and date of her birth, is meant for the best defensive charms and those pure of heart. The old wandmaker never used Thestral hair normally, especially not with the legend of the Elder Wand, but for Luna, he layered the braided strands she’d collected when she was younger at Hogwarts from her friends in the Forbidden Forest and plaited herself into the heart of the rowan wood. 

She’d never become especially talented at purely wandless magic, possibly because this particular wand responded in ways her first never did. Non-verbal magic, that had been a different story, and she misses just humming her intent as she works her wand toward a goal. It’s like she’s lost a friend or a familiar, a sort of second sense that felt somewhat like the haggardly beautiful Thestral father, mother, and foal that gave her its core.

“Magic is dying,” she continues. “Or going dormant. Anything purely magical has died or disappeared; dragons, unicorns, phoenixes… Only plants seem to be surviving whatever is happening, and things like potions that were already made and thus no longer living.” Running a hand through her damp blonde hair, she sighs before reaching out and pocketing her wand. “Only the magic that’s too entwined to separate from the user remains, far as I can tell. Like visions.”

Her visions and Legilimency, those she knows still work, but one is from her bloodline inheritance and the other such an innate talent that she has to be careful not to use it accidentally. She imagines if Teddy had lived, he could probably still use his Metamorphmagus ability. 

Some potions would still be possible, because she isn’t magicless, just curtailed or subdued somehow, but only those that use plants or supplies already harvested from animals and stored. How long those stored things will last, she isn’t sure. Latent spells like those for stasis and preventing breakage still seem to cling to what she’s salvaged.

Hershel stiffens when she mentions visions, and everyone in the room turns to look at Beth. Luna tilts her head, a soft “oh” escaping her lips. “Did she ever receive a letter to go to Illvermony?” she queries.

“No. I waited, because there were signs it should, more than just the visions, but nothing ever came.” Hershel turns back to Luna. “I tried to go to the magical district in Atlanta, to hire an owl so I could send a letter to ask, but every time I tried, something turned me back.” He leaves the most likely reason unsaid, that the Fidelius spell protected Beth by not allowing her to be part of the larger magical community.

“You know about all this, Daddy?” Beth asks, sounding upset. “The magical world?” Maggie looks perturbed.

The old man bows his head, not looking at either of the girls as he speaks. “My parents were both magical, but I was born a squib, a non-magical child to two magic users. They chose to live outside the magical community for the most part.”

Luna takes up the explanation, not wanting Hershel to have to admit that his father was an abusive bastard. “Squibs can interact with magical items and animals and see through spells meant to keep non-magicals away, but they have no ability to actually use magic. Sometimes magic will reappear in a squib’s family line after a generation or two, sometimes seeming to come from nowhere if the family history has been forgotten.”

It’s what proved to Luna that squibs weren’t as truly non-magical as purists wanted to believe. Once, after the war, St. Mungo’s sponsored a careful magical analysis of Muggleborns, and every single one traced back to a squib or pair of squibs. Why people ever thought they had no magic whatsoever always confused her, especially with Argus Filch at Hogwarts. If he was completely non-magical, how did the caretaker ever make it inside the school with all its protective wards and spells?

“What does the thing about the letter mean?” Maggie asks, moving to put an arm around her sister’s shoulders.

“When children capable of a trainable level of magic turn eleven, they receive a letter inviting them to enroll in the nearest major magical school. For America, that was Illvermony.” Deciding to spare Hershel the blame, she meets Beth’s gaze evenly. The girl looks so much like Luna, and so little like Harry, that she mourns not seeing anything immediately of her father in their daughter. “When I was here last, I cast a very powerful spell along with another wizard, to protect my family so that no one could harm them to get to me. It must have gone too far, to block Beth from attending school.”

“Why would anyone harm us just because we were related to you?” Beth sounds so utterly lost that it breaks Luna’s heart.

“There was a war going on in Britain. A dark wizard and his followers were slaughtering those they felt weren’t of pure enough bloodlines and anyone who supported them. People like me, who were purebloods of fully magical families, who supported those with non-magicals in their families being allowed in the British wizarding world, they called us blood traitors. Whole families were sometimes slaughtered for the action of one member.”

Until they have privacy, that half-truth is all Luna will offer. She doesn’t mind filling in blanks for the boy’s family, because she knows that watching her heal Carl probably shakes them to their cores. But when she has Hershel break the secret completely, it needs to only be family present.

“Did that war have anything to do with this outbreak?” Rick seems to be mulling things over in his head, but it’s an honest enough question, Luna thinks. She decides that mentioning Inferi isn’t appropriate, because what these walking dead are is nothing like what necromancy causes.

“No. The virus is manmade, something that escaped a lab and spread before it mutated into the undefeatable nightmare it became. We heard some things out of other places in Europe, before our connection to the British Prime Minister’s office fell.”

“Like France?” It’s such a specific country to name that her puzzled look leads Rick to explain. “We spent a night at the CDC. There was one doctor left, and he said the French thought they were close to a cure, but then he lost contact with them about a month ago.”

That had been after Luna was spun through the ether to America, so it’s possible the French researchers lasted longer. “It’s possible, but if they stopped communicating, it’s probably not because they found a cure.”

“Why is the CDC down to only one doctor?” Hershel is frowning at the trio. 

“Because everyone either left or killed themselves,” Shane answers, voice hoarse. He clears his throat. “And the last doctor? He nearly killed us, too, because he let us inside and didn’t tell us the place was set to self-destruct when the fuel supplies for the generators ran out. He didn’t have any answers for us.”

“No cure. I just can’t imagine.” Hershel turns to Luna, expression mournfully plaintive. “And nothing from the magical world could fix it?”

“Nothing we tried helped. Not to stop the virus once someone was infected, and not to reverse the effects once someone rose from the dead. That part was unlikely anyway. The body is subject to such horrible decay despite being up and moving that it would be terribly unkind to revive someone who already turned.” Her answer inspires an odd, anxious look between Hershel and the girls, but Luna decides to inquire about it later.

“Since I was magically transported to Georgia,” she tells her audience, “I haven’t met a single witch or wizard anywhere, and I searched Atlanta for months. The magical district in Atlanta was completely destroyed when Atlanta was bombed, probably long before the spells that hid it fell, because they don’t protect from non-magical bombs falling from the sky. I scavenged what I could anytime I found a dwelling that had belonged to a witch or wizard, which is how I obtained the potions I have.”

“Is that how you met Merle?” Rick asks. She remembers him from the roof, the man who stopped Merle from his angry rampage. He’d been one of the two men who left to find a way to escape. “When we went back, all we found was the opened set of handcuffs and a rhinestone bobby pin.”

“Yes. I was on another roof and saw him handcuffed and left behind, so I decided to save him.” She studies him for a moment, head tilted. “When did you return? We waited on the roof for several hours, waiting on the dead to clear out enough for us to risk the streets. It was ghastly hot, but I had water with me, and we were able to take shelter out of the sun once he was free from that pipe.”

The man shifts his gaze to his companions and shifts in his chair before answering her. “The next day, once his brother came back from his hunt.”

Luna can’t help herself. She’s on her feet so fast she tumbles the chair over, and the movement triggers both men to react similarly, although their chairs stay upright. “You left him there to die?” she gasps, covering her mouth with her hand. Horror courses through her veins at the very idea. When no one came back for Merle for hours, she just assumed they couldn’t, not that they’d just _not bothered_.

“T-Dog chained the door,” Rick explains, as if that was the only risk Merle faced on that rooftop.

She takes several steps backward, needing to put space between herself and this horrible, appalling man. “What kind of monster are you?” she grinds out. It’s on par with something the Death Eaters would do, leaving someone to a slow, torturous death. “To leave him to boil in the sun? No water, no shade, with nothing but the dead growling at him?”

The despair on Merle’s expression when she reached him, in his voice as he screamed his fear and rage...that had featured in her nightmares for weeks afterward.

“You don’t understand what kind of man he is,” Shane begins, but he must recognize that Luna is moving past shock and horror and finding rage instead, because he shuts up, jaw clenching as tightly as if she cast a Tongue-Tying Curse on him. A glance to the other two strangers confirms they agree with what Shane had tried to say.

“I _understand_ that it would have been kinder to have just left that door unchained, if you intended for him to die,” she rasps, tears beginning to stream down her face. It hurts to breathe, and she recognizes the desperate need to verify her loved one’s safety from those days after the war, where not having someone in sight meant the mind falsely equated them in danger. “I need to go, Uncle Hershel. I’m sorry.”

Merle is outside, and at least some of the people out there are those who left him to die. By the time her feet touch the ground outside, she’s sobbing and stumbling, eyes scanning frantically for Merle among the temporary camp. When she finds him sitting in a camp chair under the extended awning of their little RV, with his brother and Michonne nearby, she sets off at a run. He’s on his feet before she reaches him, body on full alert, and when she flings her arms around him, he gathers her close.

His people abandoned Merle to die, but Luna saved him, and he’s _hers_ now. She’ll be damned if any of them get a chance to try again. That’s the truth these people are going to learn to understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luna's POV ran far too long to share with anyone, so other reactions will have to wait, as well as finally ending the secret of Beth's adoption. I imagine it might bother some people that she would run from Beth while having this sort of extreme PTSD reaction, but Beth is still a nebulous concept to her, versus Merle that she's grown very attached to.
> 
> Some of the history I initially stated in commentary for Luna (that she was never in the Malfoy dungeon), I've decided doesn't fit the narrative I need for her. Instead, the AU for HP occurs by Luna being rescued earlier, so that Beth was actually conceived at Shell cottage, before Harry returned to the Horcrux hunt. Luna left Britain after the war ended to have Beth in secret.
> 
> End note for anyone who hasn't read my opinion on the Atlanta folks abandoning Merle on the rooftop overnight in other stories... If you think they're innocent heroes and Merle deserved to be left behind to die a horrific death from exposure, dehydration, and sunstroke, then I am probably not the author for you. The death Merle faced if he hadn't mutilated himself in the show is worse than being eaten, because at least the walkers would have killed him fairly quickly. In the Georgia heat and humidity, he wouldn't have survived for them to come back the next damn day.


End file.
